


Digitised

by antigrav_vector



Series: (R)BB fics - all pairings [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tron (1982), Tron (Movies), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, F/M, M/M, Mission Fic, Non-Graphic Violence, background Tony/Pepper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 06:22:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8478619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antigrav_vector/pseuds/antigrav_vector
Summary: After the events of IM2, Tony finds something curious in his dad's things that he hadn't had time to look at before, what with being busy trying to stop Vanko and Hammer and, you know, not die. Of course that means trying to figure out what it does. Doing so, however, has consequences he could never have imagined, digging up old traumas and causing new ones. Tony finds himself in a whole new world, hunted down by an old enemy he'd thought he'd dealt with, and rescued by an old hero he'd thought was dead...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm choosing not to warn because it would be massively spoilery! If you would like to be spoiled, please have a look at the end notes!
> 
> That said, a huge thank you to my betas [lil_1337](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lil_1337/), [Veldeia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Veldeia/), and [Dapperanachronism](http://dapperanachronism.tumblr.com/)! Without them this fic would make much less sense.
> 
> Art will also be embedded in the fic, but don't forget to heap ALL the love on my artist [hundredthousands](http://hundredthousands.tumblr.com)! Their work is GORGEOUS.

\---May 24, 1991---

"You know, Obie," Howard patted the machine they'd been building, "this is going to change a lot of lives. Computers are the future, like it or not."

They were on the Stark Industries basement floor that Howard had appropriated for his own use in developing prototypes and working on his personal pet projects. Other than Howard himself, only he and Peggy had ever been allowed in up until now, though Howard was toying with the idea of letting his son join them sometime.

The boy showed promise, Obie had to admit.

Tony was only barely twenty-one, now, but he'd graduated early from MIT and was about to finish a PhD. Not, Obie thought sourly, that Howard had given half a damn. The man was too wrapped up in his dreams of the future to see the present. He'd forgotten to go to Tony's graduation a few years ago, leaving Obie to pick up the slack, despite the pride he had in Tony's accomplishments. Howard's son was obviously dear to him. Someone Howard was proud of. But it didn't show in the least.

And here he was, proudly showing off his next revolutionary invention, rather than spending time with his son.

"Howard," he said after a long pause, letting his voice hold all the gravity he could muster, "you're probably right. God knows, we've both done our best to predict where the future is going and how it will get there. Hell, we've been leading the charge. But this," he paused to wave at the rig, "don't let this consume you. You've been spending too much time here and not enough with the people running your company. Not to mention the son you're planning to leave your shares to. Now that he's about to graduate with his PhD, it's high time you started teaching him what he needs to know to join us and, eventually, take over."

Howard blinked owlishly at him. "Maybe you have a point about Tony," he conceded, "I've been planning to read him in soon, you know that."

"Sure," Obie threw up his hands, only half-feigning the irritation he was expressing. "It's always 'soon', or 'sometime next month' or 'after I've finished this, Obie'," he retorted. "Get off your ass and do it. Or I will."

Howard scowled at him, his controlling tendencies coming to the fore. "Don't you even think about it, Obie. You may be an old friend, but that's my province to manage as I see fit."

"You haven't been managing it," Obie riposted. "That's my point."

He got nothing but stony silence in return.

"Well, I've said my piece," Obie said, and threw in the towel. With a shrug, he left. Knowing when to push and when not to had been something he'd learned long ago, and Howard was one of the prickliest people he'd ever had to deal with. Tony was bidding fair to follow the same pattern, but maybe if he worked with the boy, he could reverse that trend a little. They'd always gotten along well.

He'd take Tony out for dinner over the weekend and pitch him the idea if Howard didn't get off his ass by Friday. A week was plenty of time for Howard to make his decision. The transition would be so much smoother if Tony had some idea what was going on and how to handle the Board, and Obie intended that his godson would have all the advantages he could. Forget Howard and the money Tony stood to inherit. He needed to learn how to handle people or he'd never survive the sea of sharks that lived in the business world.

\------

Early the next morning, his pager went off, its tone shrill in the quiet of his bedroom, and Obie rolled onto his side under the covers to silence it with a groan.

Who the hell was paging him before his alarm even went off?

There were only a few possibilities.

A glance at the device's screen made him groan again. "What the fuck, Howard."

\------

It had taken him an hour, but he'd showered and dressed and made his way to the basement workshop level. It did nothing better than remind him of the argument he and Howard had had last night, but now wasn't the time to bring that up. Better to let Howard simmer down before he made another attempt. Maybe tomorrow.

The door, when he reached it was locked. Unusual. Maybe Howard was doing something top secret again. Or hiding from the Board. He did that more than was strictly wise, and Tony was liable to pick up that habit at this rate, even before he took on the role of CEO.

Unlocking the door and letting himself in, Obadiah glanced around. "Howard?"

The room was dark but for the glow of the laser digitizer Howard had been showing off last night.

"What is this, revenge?" Obie scowled. "Come on out, Howard, and tell me what you hauled me out of bed for."

The console opposite the rig lit up, seemingly in response to his question, and something about that sparked unease in him. Obie hesitated before he sat in the backless chair.

"Howard, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

The laser powered up with a whine and before he could react, it fired. With a bright flash, he felt it scan and digitize him, just as Howard had described, and then he was staggering on his feet somewhere he didn't recognize.

\------

\---October 5, 1991---

"Dad," Tony only dared ask because his father was in a rare good mood, "what's been up with Obie lately? He's been acting kinda weird."

His mother rolled her eyes without actually doing it. "Tony," she interjected, "you're going to have to be more specific."

Howard nodded. "He's been under a lot of pressure from the Board lately," he pointed out.

His dad was right about that much, Tony had to admit to himself. Somehow, someone had gotten hold of some Stark Industries designs for the personal electronics market that weren't on the market yet and started producing them.

"You're probably right," Tony conceded verbally. "But he's been... distant."

"He's got a lot on his mind," his mother soothed him again. "Give this time to blow over."

\------

\---October 15, 1991---

Obie was still acting weird, no matter what his mom thought. Tony stared up at his ceiling from his position on his bed. It was 3 am, but he couldn't seem to fall asleep.

\------

\---October 20, 1991---

Suddenly, oddly, everything seemed to snap back into place as though nothing had ever happened. Uncle Obie was back to normal.

His worries about Uncle Obie assuaged, Tony found himself looking forward to the beginning of next semester. He was going to finally finish working on his PhD and defend his thesis in the spring, since this semester was being devoted to finishing his MBA. Obie had promised to take him out somewhere nice to celebrate properly, and start getting him ready to lead the company some day. It was more interest than his dad had ever shown in his career, and Tony enjoyed it. He might be able to impress his dad at last, once he had a grasp on SI's workings.

\------

\---December 17, 1991---

All it had taken to shatter his world had been one phone call.

\------

\---December 21, 1991---

Staring down at the filled in graves with their fancy headstones, Tony bit his lip to force back the tears. He hadn't ever really loved his parents, he'd thought. But now, suddenly, the world was a much colder place. Even with Obie standing beside him, a firm grip on his shoulder to steady him, Tony found himself grieving.

"Come on, kiddo," uncle Obie said quietly, "let's get you home and warm, and then we can talk about the next steps."

Thank fuck, Tony thought to himself, he wouldn't be forced into the system.

\------

\---January 8, 1992---

"Tony, my boy," Obie strode over and dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder.

Tony quickly saved what he'd been working on and looked up. He'd been using his latest project -- a miniaturized cell phone, small enough to put all the others on the market to shame -- to distract himself. The strong feelings that had hit him during the funeral just wouldn't leave him alone. "Yeah? What is it, Obie?"

"We've got a problem," Obie told him, as though he hadn't heard the news about SI and the accusations of illegal access of all kinds of supposedly secure servers, "and I think you might be able to help us solve it."

That smacked of a new and even better distraction. Giving Obie a long level look, Tony asked, "just what is it you need me for?"

"Well, we're a team. You know that as well as I do. And right now what I need is something I can point to and use to tell the world we're doing something about that Master Control Program that's been using SI resources to hack into everything under the sun."

"Okay," Tony thought about that for a moment, glancing around his still somewhat makeshift lab and workshop. "I can help you with that. But I'll need some more computing power to do it efficiently."

"Whatever you need, kiddo, you let me know."

\------

\---January 15, 1992---

It had taken him a week, but he was pretty sure he'd finally done it. Tony sat back in his chair with a groan. His spine cracked and popped alarmingly as he forced it straight. "One of these days," he muttered to himself, "I need to develop a way to code that doesn't destroy my spine."

The MCP, as Obie had taken to calling it, had been a slippery bastard to track down, and Tony had found a lot of copies of it as he'd trawled the networks of the world searching for it. It had infiltrated a mind boggling number of top secret organizations, including the Kremlin and the Pentagon, and backed itself up on their hard drives for good measure.

He'd had to code his own automated search program to help him find all the copies, and he'd made sure to keep a copy of this MCP for himself, on a set of diskettes. He intended to analyze it later on a non-networked computer. An AI that could think and reason for itself was a damned interesting bit of code, and he wanted to see if he could replicate it, but without the murderous tendencies.

For now, though, he could tell Obie the good news at last. His uncle had been hounding him for updates several times a day, in response to the media pressure on him.

\------

\---January 18, 1992---

Obie had been the one to give the press conference about Tony's work containing the MCP, and Tony himself was fine with that. Not only did he personally dislike being in the spotlight, but Obie was still technically in charge of the company, and therefore also the major player in regulating the company's image. Tony himself was set to take over at the end of the second quarter, after his birthday, and he had a few surprises planned for the military. The new smart bombs he'd been developing should make a nice lure with which to gain some new contracts.


	2. Chapter 2

\---May 31, 2010---

So, that down there was his Expo in ruins.

Tony wanted to groan. Pepper was (rightly) royally pissed at him about that, and, despite the kiss they'd shared, they weren't really a thing. Not yet. No matter how badly Tony wanted it.

He couldn't even really find it in himself to be upset about that state of affairs, either. He was a hot mess and he knew it.

Their first priority was the company's PR, now. Second was the cleanup. And then, maybe, he could try to win Pepper over.

\------

\---June 3, 2010---

He'd reached the stage of the cleanup that included his workshop in Malibu, and the trunks of stuff Agent Agent had brought with him.

Going through them again, less hastily, Tony unearthed a crate he hadn't noticed before. Or, perhaps more accurately, a crate he'd disregarded as not immediately relevant to his attempt to keep himself from dying of heavy metal poisoning. Frowning thoughtfully at it, he studied the label on its surface: _Transformation Rayform for Online Networks_.

What the hell was that supposed to be?

"J, we got any notes on this thing in the bundle Agent Agent hauled in and dropped on our doorstep?"

"I'm afraid not, sir. There are, however, some notes in the archives about something called a TRON virtualizer rig. Your father was working on it shortly before his death."

"Any indication of what the thing does?" Tony asked, knowing the answer was likely 'no', given his father's paranoia that someone would steal his designs. After seeing what had happened when that had actually come to pass, Tony no longer thought the paranoia an overreaction. After Obie's actions in selling his weapons illegally and trying to kill him, he was starting to agree with Howard.

That wasn't something that happened often.

"Well, J," he said, "I guess we've got a mystery to solve."

"Do be careful, sir."

Getting the thing down to his workshop was easier than expected, even with the particle accelerator still taking up a lot of the space in the area. Most of the debris was gone, thanks to JARVIS' efforts riding herd on the bots, leaving Tony enough floor space to set up the thing. It was surprisingly simple, and downright elegant, really. A laser on a tripod, and meant to be computer steered, judging by the ancient serial cables dangling from the back of it.

It took longer to find the right cables and connectors than to actually boot up the thing, and that made Tony want to test it.

"J, you think you can slap together some drivers for this thing?"

"I believe so, sir," JARVIS replied. "There is some functional code on the device's storage, and it appears to be composed of software intended to operate the laser. The storage is much larger than would be expected for most devices of this era, however, and there appears to be a copy of some code similar to that of the Master Control Program you worked to eradicate, according to the archives. Without knowing the functions of the device, it might be wiser to--"

"JARVIS," Tony drawled, warning in his tone, "we're testing this sucker. See if you can isolate that MCP code and keep it where it is. No connections to the SI intranet or the web. You get me?"

"Yes, sir," JARVIS sounded resigned. "I suppose I'll just supervise, then, shall I?"

"Do that." Tony settled himself in his chair at his workstation, and pulled up the analysis of the device that JARVIS had put together, intending to look at the code one last time before he turned it on.

A beat later, JARVIS' voice broke his focus very briefly. "Sir, move! You--"

A sensation like fire began running over his limbs, the pain disappearing inch by inch, following what Tony distantly noted was a raster pattern.

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:15:55---

Looking around him, stunned, Tony picked himself up off the floor of... Not his workshop.

"Well, fuck," he groaned. "This can't be good."

Wherever he was, it looked like the basement development lab his dad used to have at SI, way back in the late 80s or early 90s. Right down to the big boxy computers and a couple of old weapons projects Tony recognized, for all that he'd only seen the place a couple of times after his parents had died.

"JARVIS?" Tony tried, knowing it likely wouldn't work.

Only silence answered him.

So now what? 

"Looks like I'll have the MacGyver my way out of here somehow," he muttered to the empty room. "Any suggestions?"

Tony took stock. The tech he'd had in his pockets was still there. He had his phone and his favourite multitool, a spool of 24 gauge wire, and a random packet of lube he'd forgotten was in his pockets, but not much else. His phone, of course, had no reception, and the rest wouldn't be all that useful until he had some idea what he needed to do to get out.

If he could even do so without JARVIS to help.

Taking his time, Tony ransacked the workshop, taking anything he thought might be useful. There wasn't much. A pair of miniature (for the time) pocket radios that felt like bricks in his hands for how heavy they were compared to his phone, and some schematics Tony didn't recognize. The schematics he folded up as small as he could get them and stuffed them in his back pocket, thankful he was in his shop jeans rather than slacks, and had pockets.

Turning to look at the room one last time, Tony belatedly noticed the leather jacket lying draped over the side of the sofa. He grabbed it and shrugged it on. To his surprise it was rather wider in the shoulders than expected. Not Howard's, then.

So whose was it?

Leaving that particular mystery aside for now, Tony stepped over to the basement door he remembered so well, and turned the knob. It gave easily and opened on a dark set of stairs that also were quite familiar.

As he climbed, he wondered if he'd been sent back in time. This place seemed to be Stark Industries circa 1990. The workshop looked just about as he remembered it from the months leading up to the car accident, right down to the projects that it contained. And, he noted as he emerged into the elevator foyer adjacent to the lobby, quite empty.

Why was it so deserted? There had always been three shifts at SI so that there could be good communications between the various international offices and the HQ here in New York, which had meant the building was humming 24 hours a day during the work week. So where was everyone? There were no secretaries and no receptionists. No cleaning crew or security.

The effect was eerie. Like walking through a ghost town.

What the hell was going on here?

As he finished the thought, he reached the outer doors and stepped through, and the sight stopped him cold. "Okay, what the fuck is this?"

It looked like someone good at photoshop had taken a 1 to 1 model of 90s New York and made everything look futuristic as hell, by taking all the buildings and sidewalks and tinting them black, then adding bright arc reactor white-blue highlights. It was gorgeous, in a very stark kind of way, but Tony felt a lot like he was about to have a panic attack.

He found himself stumbling to a halt in the middle of the deserted street -- where were all the cars? -- searching frantically for something, anything, familiar. He couldn't seem to take a full breath and his heart was pounding with the adrenaline flooding through him. Holy fuck, where even was he?

And, of course, that was when things got even worse.

With a roar that reminded him of his repulsor boots, a massive red-highlighted... thing... came drifting down out of the sky directly overhead. A blindingly bright searchlight flicked on, trained on him, and he shaded his eyes with his hand, trying to work out what the thing was. Once he realized it was after him, he turned to run, and discovered that the ground around him had fallen away, leaving him with a hexagonal area maybe a meter in diameter to stand on.

He turned to stare back up at the thing in disbelief. "This can't be happening."

A platform that reminded him of a weapons rack lowered until it was level with his little platform, and a pair of men in uniforms that matched the enormous piece of machinery stepped off. It was only then that Tony realised that there was a row of people on the platform, all of them restrained.

The pair of uniformed men, the highlights on their black suits glowing orange, stepped up to him and grabbed him by the shoulders of his jacket.

"This program has no disc," the one on the left commented. "Another stray."

Jolted into motion, Tony tried to struggle against their grip. "Hey, let me go! What are you talking about? I'm not a program!"

They didn't say a word, hustling him into the only open slot in the row of restrained people and securing him with restraints that seemed to be made of light yet still held his hands and feet fast.

Their job done, the two men stepped off to the sides and into a pair of alcoves in the machine's 'legs' that Tony hadn't noticed, in his stunned state. The platform he was standing on started smoothly rising again a moment later, and once it was locked in place the massive machine took off again, smoothly flying through the city for a few blocks before it rose above the highrises and took to open air. One of the other restrained people in the rack, as Tony was going to call it for lack of an official term, was half-hysterical, muttering something to himself about 'games'. Tony didn't bother asking.

Tony took the opportunity to try to take stock once more. This was bad.

Before long, they were approaching what looked like a massive stadium, larger than any he'd ever seen at home, as thunder growled ominously in the distance. The rack lowered again, and a trio of uniformed men carrying staves that glowed as orange as the highlights on their clothes stepped up to them. Two took up station at the sides of the rack, and the two in the alcoves stepped out to join them. The guy in the center stepped up onto the rack and over to the guy farthest to Tony's left. He stared at the guy for a second then declared, "rectify!"

Whatever the fuck that meant.

Then again, Tony thought quickly, these were presumably programs that were being gathered for whatever purpose. At the very least they were referring to one another as such.

It all came together like a lightning flash. The virtualiser. It had put him _inside its storage_. He was in a virtual world, inside a computer. And he'd started out in what had looked like Howard's old workshop. He was inside the laser's onboard memory.

Which was isolated from the internet and SI intranet. So JARVIS would have no clue where he was.

And then something he'd done had tipped this massive thing off to his existence. Maybe it was some kind of antivirus. 

The guy in the uniform stepped up to the guy who'd been muttering to himself and was now silent but cowering. "Games!" He pronounced with finality.

"No! Not the Games!" The guy fought free, hysterical fear lending him strength, and ran the few steps to fling himself off the platform they were on. "Erase me!" He leapt and fell about ten meters into a massive air circulation fan, where he shattered to pieces.

Tony winced. What the fuck were these Games that they were scary enough to drive a guy to suicide? That was clearly what had just happened.

The guys in uniforms turned back to their jobs without even a shrug, not even acknowledging the guy's demise. The one doing the assessments stopped in front of Tony, who tried to talk his way out, reflexively. "Look, I know you probably hear this a lot, but there's been a big mistake--"

"Games!" the guy interrupted him, and two of the guys waiting in the wings stepped up and grabbed Tony's shoulders again. They frogmarched him onto a square platform with beveled corners and held him there until a set of restraints came up to secure his feet, then stepped back.

The moment they were off the platform, it began descending, quickly enough for the air rushing past him to ruffle his hair and tug at his borrowed jacket. It came to a surprisingly gentle stop what seemed like about 50 floors later, coming to rest on the floor of a wide open room. A quiet ping sounded somewhere off to his left, and four alcoves lit up, opening.

Out of each stepped a white uniformed supermodel. One of them reminded him of Natasha to an alarming degree. Albeit taller. They stepped mechanically toward him in perfect synch, and stopped standing all around him, staring at him impassively.

"So, uhh, what can I do for you ladies?" He tried, giving them a smile. It wasn't as suave as usual, but he thought he could be forgiven that much.

Without a word, two of them held up their right hands, a bright glow lighting at the tips of their index fingers, underscoring just how far from human they were, despite their appearances. Biting at the inside of his cheek, Tony forced himself not to freak out.

"What are those for?" He asked, in an attempt to distract himself.

Still silent, the two of them ran their fingers down his legs from the waist. The jeans parted like butter under a laser cutter.

"Hey," he yelped, "watch it! That's borderline sexual harassment."

The other two ladies did the same with his borrowed jacket and his worn Metallica t-shirt.

It pained him to lose that. And all his supplies.

The remnants of his clothes disappeared into a small hole that opened up at the edge of the platform, and out of nowhere a black bodysuit began appearing on him. It spread across his skin like oil on water, and feeling oddly like oil as well. Once it had covered his torso and limbs, it stopped expanding, leaving his head, hands, arc reactor, and feet bare, and morphed. It settled in a state that reminded him both of neoprene in its flexibility and of Kevlar. He made a note to try to replicate the material once he was home. It would make a nice upgrade to his undersuit.

After that first layer was in place, the four ladies stepped away from him, and picked up pieces of what seemed to be body armour. "He's _different_ ," he heard one of the other ladies murmur to the redhead he felt like he recognized. Then the four of them were stepping back over to him and the armour plates were placed against the bodysuit, where they expanded and interlocked. It was oddly reminiscent of his own armour and that made him wonder just what information and schematics this little microcosm had access to.

Once all the pieces were in place, a series of bold stripes and circles lit up white-blue at his throat, and shoulders, running the length of his torso and down his legs.

A bland female voice began speaking, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. "Attention, program. You will be provided with an identity disc. Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disc. If you lose your disc or fail to obey commands, you will be subject to immediate deresolution."

"Hey," he called out to the lady who looked like Natasha, "what the hell are these games? What am I supposed to do?"

She gave him a blank look that held a hint of a smirk. "Survive."

Her tone of voice was level but not as expressionless as he'd expected. Tony watched somewhat dumbfounded as the four ladies stepped backwards -- still in perfect synch and perfectly poised in the heels they wore -- into their alcoves, which closed around them and went dark.

Well, survival was one thing he was good at.

First, though, he wanted to know if he could do anything with the new knowledge he'd gained about his surroundings. If he really was in a virtual world, there had to be a way he could tap into the system and take advantage of his programming abilities. Whether to defend himself, or to contact JARVIS somehow.

It simply wasn't likely that Howard would've built something like this and not had a way to program and tweak it on the fly, if need be.

But how to access it?

This was the ultimate in visual programming, even more so than the things like MATLAB's data acquisition suite or VISUAL BASIC. Where did one even start looking for a command prompt in a place like this?

Ingrained habit pointed him at the walls, where he had interfaces installed in his homes to talk to JARVIS, and take notes for himself to expand on later. Here the walls were blank.

Knowing he had only a little time before his absence would be noticed, and not in a good way, Tony looked around the space one more time. There was still no indication of where he could access things, but so far the only part of the environment that he'd seen respond to other elements in contact with it was the floor.

Crouching down and putting his splayed fingertips on the floor, Tony felt the world around him fall away. It didn't disappear, physically, but it faded out of his awareness almost entirely. In front of him floated an interface that looked a lot like the holographic ones he used in his workshop. Lifting one hand off the floor instinctively to try to type on it, Tony watched in dismay as it disappeared from sight again.

Okay. Both hands on the ground.

So how to type, then?

Putting his hand back down, Tony stared at the prompt for a second that felt like an hour. The disc on his back seemed to grow warm. Wracking his brain for a way to prompt the system with a simple whoami command, Tony watched in amazement as the command seemed to materialize on the screen and get executed.

He didn't even read the information that came back, stunned by the implication that he was going to be programming directly from his thoughts to metaphorical paper.

Hastily, he accessed the disc he'd been fitted with, fumbling his way through the file tree and hacking the file permissions on the spot using his dad's old credentials, not trusting the implications of the disc's existence at _all_ , and wiped everything on the disc from the day after he'd been kidnapped in Afghanistan. There was nothing on there about Iron Man or the miniature arc reactor anymore. That accomplished, Tony stopped the sync with his memories cold, for good measure. The fact that he had that disc at all implied it could be taken and read, and he did not need any of his armour schematics or the miniature arc reactor specs getting out. Even if the system he was in was disconnected from the 'net, there was no JARVIS here to keep an eye on things.

He'd learned not to take such chances when Obie had tried to kill him.

Letting the interface go and knowing that he'd already wasted enough time to look suspicious, Tony stepped out into the blinding light of the arena.


	3. Chapter 3

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:16:05---

Tony found himself in a small compartment that felt like a cross between an office cubicle and a fishbowl. The walls were clear and vaguely blue tinted, and all of them looked identical. Fifteen other boxes moved in synch with his as it rose out of its position along the wall of the arena, and out into open air. It and the others formed two circles, one above the other. The two sets of eight boxes drifted past one another in opposite directions, as that same nondescript feminine voice that had informed him about his disc announced the beginning of something called 'disc wars'.

That sounded ominous, somehow.

Without warning, the box he was in came to a smooth halt and the voice announced the beginning of round one.

With a wince, Tony warily sized up his opponent, who was doing the same to him with a very pleased expression. Clearly he thought he could wipe the floor with Tony.

Tony raised an eyebrow at him and watched his opponent closely. The man vaguely resembled Vanko, but older, and obviously had some idea what was expected, whereas Tony didn't.

Without a word, Vanko 2.0 pulled his disc off his back and turned it over twice in his hands, almost meditatively. In a sudden motion, he flung it at the wall. Tony watched as it rebounded and flew at his face, ducking. He tucked into a roll and came up with his own disc in his hand.

This he could do, he smirked. It was all about angles. He threw his own disc, dropping to his knees and bending backwards to avoid his opponent's next throw. It whizzed past his face, and Tony righted himself in time to catch his own disc, which had missed.

His opponent may have had an idea of what the rules were, but Tony didn't. And that was his advantage. Tony waited for the guy to make his next throw, and threw himself down to the floor, groaning, as though injured.

The feint worked. His opponent sauntered over, confident he'd won, and Tony took the opportunity to strike. This was about survival, after all, and these weren't people. They were programs. Programs could be restored later, as long as the working memory wasn't cleared. Tony waited until his opponent was in reach, then lashed out with the disc still in his hand.

His opponent shattered into a shower of bright blue sparkles with a howl, and Tony stood.

He wasn't so naive that he thought they'd let him out before the final round, or his death. He'd survived the Ten Rings. He knew how to wait for an opening and then use it to his advantage.

It wasn't long before he got it, either.

Most of the other matches were still ongoing, and the one just next to his box grabbed his attention. One of the two combatants brought his disc down on the 'floor' of the compartment, shattering one of the pale blue hexagonal panels like glass and sending his opponent falling to his 'death'.

Tony grinned broadly. He had a way out.

Waiting until his compartment was over the smoothly rounded one that hovered below them, Tony used his disc to smash the glass under his feet.

He fell, landing awkwardly on the 'roof' of the compartment, and flailed to keep his balance as the announcer began saying something about combatants and illegal actions. Below him, a flicker of movement caught his attention at just the wrong moment. The compartment below him was occupied, and the guy inside was watching him levelly. His surprise cost him his potential escape. Tony slid backward, falling into the compartment and onto his ass. 

The announcer's tune changed immediately, and she announced the final round. The crowd, not giving a flying fuck about the fact that this was clearly a huge departure from the plan, cheered madly.

God damn it.

Pissed at himself, Tony straightened. He was about to go up against the system's handpicked champion, now, thanks to his own clumsiness. It was bound to be--

Catching his first real glimpse of his opponent, Tony swore. "Fucking hell. Barnes?"

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:16:29---

Oh, this was so not good. Tony knew that face like he knew his own. He'd seen it on dad's film reels so many times he was pretty sure he could draw it from memory, for all that he was no artist.

Ominously, though, Barnes' uniform had those same bright orange highlights he remembered from the guards and the whatever-it-was that had picked him up when he'd arrived here.

Barnes was also being very silent. Not at all like he'd behaved in the reels his father had shown him as a kid. That he'd watched again recently, when SHIELD had deigned to return him his dad's old belongings.

He was still pissed about that, too.

"Hey," he tried again, and got a stony stare, "what happened to you?"

Rather than respond verbally, Barnes pulled two discs off his back and they flickered to life in his hands. One of which, Tony only then noticed, was metal. Barnes adjusted his grip on his discs, and settled into a crouch, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet. Coiled like a snake ready to strike.

Before Tony could make a third attempt to draw Barnes out, though, the man leapt into action, in response to some signal Tony himself had missed. Ducking and tucking into a roll as he had in the first match, Tony managed to dodge the first throw of Barnes' discs.

True to expectations, Barnes fought like a wildcat. All of his movements were quick and precise, and he wasn't pulling any punches. It took Tony less than a second to come to the conclusion that he wasn't winning this matchup. He knew that he wouldn't be able to keep his dodges up for long, and retaliation wasn't in the cards. He simply didn't have the strength or speed Barnes did.

"Where the hell did you get that second disc?" Tony gritted out between his attempts to dodge and keep Barnes from pinning him in a corner.

He got no reply, but he'd thought there'd been a flicker of emotion on that handsome face, barely visible through the layer of scruff and long untidy hair.

Making another attempt to get past Barnes' guard, Tony tried tucking into a roll to stand at Barnes' feet, but all it got him was one of his arms pinned behind his back and one of Barnes' -- not the metal one, thank fuck -- around his neck.

"Yield," Barnes growled. It was the first word he'd spoken the whole match.

"I don't think so," Tony gritted out between his teeth, still trying to get loose.

Barnes let him, then hooked one ankle around Tony's, sending him to the floor and following to pin him, one of his discs at Tony's throat.

"Yield," he growled a second time.

"Never," Tony growled back, trying to free himself.

All he managed was to nick himself on the disc held at his throat. A drop of blood welled up and fell to the floor of the compartment with a quiet splash.

The arena went silent enough that you could have heard a pin drop, and Barnes' eyes went wide and blank. "User...?" He asked, disbelief clear in his voice.

Tony wasn't sure whether that was a good sign or a very bad one.

When Barnes stood, pulling him to his feet, Tony allowed it, taking the moment to regain his bearings. A beat later, Barnes marched him out of the compartment, which had drifted so lightly through the air that Tony hadn't registered its movement until Barnes had started walking, and into a foyer which contained nothing but an elevator.

It opened as they approached, and Barnes pushed him into the car without even pausing long enough to break step.

The doors closed on the foyer soundlessly, but to Tony it might as well have been a death knell.

He was obviously being taken to someone nominally in charge, and that was never good. It either meant negotiations or threats, or both, and here, in this world, Tony had no leverage whatsoever.

Fucking hell. There was no way this could go well.

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:16:34---

The elevator doors opened on another foyer, this one containing four programs that seemed to be running something or other. Possibly the games, Tony guessed. Barnes simply marched him past them and to a door set at the far end of the room.

They stepped through, and Tony steeled himself.

The guy Tony assumed was the head honcho was sitting on a low sofa, one leg bent at the knee and planted on the cushions. The other was draped over the edge of the sofa to rest on the floor.

"Well, well, well," he said, and the man's voice made Tony stiffen. "The Hero of the Games. What an honor."

It just wasn't possible.

It couldn't be.

He must have made some small movement, because Barnes' already tight grip on his shoulder tightened further, pinning him in place. But there was no way.

Obie was dead, Tony reminded himself, killed years ago in the aftermath of Afghanistan. "Who the hell are you?" He demanded. 

"You know," the man continued, avoiding the question, "I despaired of ever getting to meet you in person."

The familiarity of the voice was sending horrible shivers down Tony's spine, and he had to close his eyes briefly. Swallowing against the way the weird mix of emotions was making his throat go all tight, he studied his opponent. This wasn't Obie. That much had been implied, but who was he? Had he picked this form on purpose, knowing Tony's traumas somehow?

Forcing his spine straight, Tony replied. "Well, I can't say I'm that pleased to meet you."

The sally got an indulgent chuckle. "Tony, Tony," the guy chided, "I might not be him, but I know everything he does."

Whatever the fuck that meant. Tony found himself scrambling to find something to say.

Taking Tony's silence as a cue to continue, not-Obie stood up and paced slowly towards him, his long robe decorated in orange. The light seemed to reflect in his eyes and made him look incredibly sinister. "I know, for example," not-Obie said, his words measured and sounding every inch like Obie had, controlled and patient, "that he hired someone to kill you."

"As you can see," Tony managed to snark, "it didn't take."

"Exactly." Not-Obie smirked, and Tony knew he wouldn't like what was coming next. "Bring me his disc," not-Obie demanded.

Jostled as Barnes obeyed without question, and very uncomfortable with that little situation, Tony watched warily. He might have been tempted to make a break for it, but there were other guards in the room, and he had no doubt not-Obie would also send Barnes after him.

"So what do I call you, then," he asked as not-Obie put the disc into some reader thing that seemed to incorporate antigravity technology, for the disc remained suspended in midair inside it.

Not-Obie chuckled at the question. "Is 'Obie' not good enough for you?"

"It's not your name," Tony pointed out, trying not to grit his teeth.

"Very well, call me CLU, then, if you must have a second name for me."

CLU turned his attention back to the disc, which seemed to be showing a 3D projection of most of his memories. When he reached the end, CLU turned back to Tony, and held the disc out to Barnes. "So," he drawled, "you managed to avoid getting killed, and now, only days later, you seem to have found your way in here."

Now that was very incorrect, but there was no way Tony was even hinting that more time had passed. He had some leverage now and he intended to keep it for later.

"You're something special, Tony," CLU went on. "I don't know how you stopped the sync function on your disc, but I've fixed that for you."

Handing the disc back to Barnes, CLU turned away to stare out over the arena. Barnes stepped back over to Tony and clicked the disc back into place, leaving Tony wishing for a private moment to wipe it again. 

"You know, kiddo," CLU said, and Tony could hear the smirk, "after the way you short circuited the fun and games earlier, you owe the crowd a show."

"Thought I gave them enough of one," Tony tried. "They seemed pretty into it."

"Asset," CLU said to Barnes, "escort our guest down to the lightcycle grid. And have my aide bring the batons."

A crisp nod and Barnes was turning Tony by his shoulder and all but pushing him out of the luxury box. Once they were back in the elevator, Tony tried talking to his guide-slash-jailer again. "Hey, Barnes, wanna fill me in?"

Barnes stayed silent.

"What the hell are these batons he was talking about?"

Getting no answer, Tony resigned himself to learning this on the fly, as well.


	4. Chapter 4

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:16:37---

Tony found himself watching Barnes, rather than CLU or the aide who held a long rectangular box as he announced the next 'attraction'.

Barnes looked blank. Like he had no idea where he was.

Hell, Tony was starting to wonder if the guy knew _who_ he was.

The crowd cheered wildly, and the aide turned to CLU, opening the box and offering his master whatever was inside. CLU took one, an expression of anticipation taking root. "My counterpart may have failed to kill you," he said quietly, "but I will not."

Tony had half expected that, but it still caught him off guard, hearing it spoken. He'd probably be having nightmares about this for weeks. Numb to his fingertips, he took the other baton in the box. "Gonna tell me what I'm supposed to do with this thing?"

CLU smiled indulgently. "No." Turning to Barnes and the three other patsies who'd appeared behind him, CLU called, "let's go, boys."

Taking a running start, the five of them took their batons in both hands and did something that made them come apart at their centers. As Tony watched, amazed, motorcycles seemed to materialize under each of them, as the batons became the handlebars.

If the goal hadn't been his head on a platter, it would totally have been the coolest fucking thing he'd ever seen.

As it was, Tony swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat.

"Hey," someone called out behind him, "let's go! You're wasting time!"

Turning to look over his shoulder, Tony realized he'd been assigned a team of his own. For appearance's sake, he was sure. Nodding firmly, Tony did his best to bury his nerves. "Alright, come on."

Gripping his own baton tightly, Tony tried to emulate what the other team had done. The world around him fell away as his focus narrowed down to what he was about to do. His hands naturally seemed to slot into place, and a click sounded, loud in the silence broken only by the pounding of his heart.

The bike formed up beneath him, lit up white-blue, and flanking him, his teammates did the same.

A fierce grin pulled at his lips. He was Iron Man. _This_ he could do.

Taking in the arena, Tony singled out one of the opposing team that wasn't Barnes or CLU to learn from. It didn't take long for his target to work out that Tony was after him, and he did something to his bike that made it start leaving behind a trail of orange light.

Slowing to follow behind the guy at what felt like a safe distance, Tony reached out to touch the trail. His hand bounced back as though off something solid, and, information gathered, he veered off abruptly.

The action clearly surprised the guy he'd been trailing, and he turned to look over his shoulder. The moment of inattention cost him; one of Tony's teammates spotted the opening this left, and took it.

Sweeping in from the orange guy's left, Tony's teammate laid down a short strip of white-blue light right across orange's path, sending orange flying as he tumbled over his bike. As he hit the arena floor, he shattered into a shower of sparkles, and Tony smirked to himself. Okay. Game mechanic worked out.

It was time to apply what he'd learned.

Shortly after singling out his next opponent, Tony was forced to break off his attack. CLU and Barnes appeared, seemingly out of thin air, to flank him and Tony had a split second to make a decision.

Stopping his bike by simply yanking at the baton handlebars and clicking them back together, Tony tucked into a roll, bouncing off the walls of orange light on either side of him before he came to a stop.

Standing quickly, he shook off his daze and jumped over the orange wall to his left and started up his bike again.

His opponents were halfway across the arena now, and turning to make another attempt, but Tony had their number now. He sped off perpendicular to the path he'd been on, clicking on the blue white light wall on his own bike as he went.

So this was like playing snake, was it? Well, he might not have JARVIS to plot him a course, but he could do it on his own. He wasn't a genius with math for nothing.

A few deft turns and he had one more of the opposing team knocked out. CLU and Barnes were gunning for him again, and as Tony looked around the arena to take stock, he realized it was only the three of them left on the field.

"Come on, asshole," he muttered to himself, "bring it."

As if someone had been waiting for a sufficiently dramatic cue, that was when the explosions happened. The arena went wild.

Tony himself had to swerve to avoid whoever it was that had just appeared on the field. Whoever it was had a bike like his own, albeit modified somehow, and immediately zeroed in on Barnes.

"Bucky," the unknown guy -- and, yes, it was a guy -- shouted, "Buck, snap out of it!"

Barnes, who'd stopped in his tracks for a moment, surprised, growled back, "who the hell is Bucky?"

Tony had to give it to this newcomer. He'd gotten more of a response out of Barnes in under ten seconds than Tony had in the last hour. And the guy's voice was hauntingly familiar somehow, though Tony couldn't pin down why.

"Come on, Bucky," the stranger tried again as the announcer droned on about illegal combatants and CLU bore down on then with rage blazing in his eyes.

Tony pulled up next to the stranger, dismounted from his bike, then physically interposed himself between the two guys. "Hey," he said turning to the stranger, "look, if you don't get the hell out of here, _now_ , CLU is gonna go apeshit on you, and it'll end badly for all of us."

"I'm not leaving without Bucky," the guy tried to insist, but Tony could see that he knew getting caught by CLU would be horrific in its consequences.

"Come on," Tony insisted, quietly but using intensity to make his point, as he pulled on the guy's arm. "Get me out of here and I'll help you get Bucky back," he offered, "but we need to go _now_."

The unknown guy visibly hesitated for a long moment before he nodded. "Alright, get on."

Not knowing where this guy was going to take him or why a total stranger was helping him made Tony distinctly nervous, but it was still better than hanging around here and letting CLU kill him. And then there was the puzzle that Barnes represented, Tony reflected as he jumped on the back of the unknown guy's bike. His arms went around the guy's waist, and they were off.

This guy drove like Tony flew in the armour: deft, precise, and faster than was really necessary.

They left through the same hole the guy had made in the arena wall with that explosion, jumping several wide gaps that yawned like chasms beneath them, disappearing into the darkness below. Barnes and CLU were hot on their heels until the guy made one last jump into an area that wasn't paved. The bike bucked beneath them as the tires shifted and adjusted, and then they were off-roading.

"Won't they follow?" Tony prompted.

"Nah," his driver answered, "their bikes can't handle this kind of terrain. It's what's kept us safe until now."

... Us? Tony had to bite his tongue to keep from asking more questions. Distracting the guy helping him before they were safely away from their pursuers was a bad idea.

True to his rescuer's word, though, their pursuit didn't follow, soon left far behind and very frustrated.

They drove on in silence for another half hour or so, by Tony's reckoning, until his rescuer went apparently insane. He turned the bike toward a sheer cliff face and gunned the engine.

Tony, far more accustomed to having people trying to kill him than help him, made a strangled noise and bailed off the bike, trusting his body armour to keep him more or less in one piece as he protected his head and neck, tucking into a roll. By the time he fetched up against a boulder, winded and knowing he'd have a few new bruises, his rescuer had gone about half a klick, braked hard, and turned back.

Tony just lay there, knowing he had no chance of outrunning the bike on foot, and tried to calm his breathing.

When the guy got back to him, he shut off the bike and just stood there, his hands clenching and unclenching, body language surprisingly distressed. After a long moment, he blurted, his anger obvious, "what the hell did you do that for?"

Tony snorted. "You were driving right for a cliff at top speed. What did you expect me to do, dumbass?"

"You-- I--" with a frustrated growl, he pulled off his helmet and ran a hand through his hair, mussing it completely. Some of it stood on end, thanks to the sweat in it.

Tony couldn't help himself. He lay there and stared. He would have known that face anywhere, and holy shit, what the fuck was even happening here?

Captain America stood over him and stared him down. "Come on, on your feet. We need to get indoors."

Stunned by this latest turn of events, Tony just nodded. He didn't move for a long moment, so Cap reached down and hauled him to his feet, the movement apparently effortless. On his feet, Tony wavered as the day caught up with him. A hand on his shoulder steadied him and pushed him insistently back toward the bike.

Once he was settled again, helmet back on, Cap spoke again, sounding vaguely apologetic. "It's a hologram. We had to disguise the entrance."

He took off again, more sedately this time, and Tony took the opportunity to try to gather his wits.

Somehow he'd been digitized and uploaded into a computer, and he'd met two long-dead WWII heroes in one day, one apparently brainwashed and working for an evil Obie lookalike and the other trying to get back his best friend in what felt like history repeating itself. 

Could this mindfuck get any weirder?

\------


	5. Chapter 5

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:16:42---

Ten minutes later, trying to keep from having an anxiety attack on the spot, Tony wanted to laugh hysterically. He needed to remember not to challenge the universe.

"Tony?"

Cap was looking back and forth between them, not sure what to do. "Wait," he asked the new impostor, "you two know each other?"

"Rogers," the reply sounded exasperated, "that's my godson."

Shuddering and wrapping one hand around his opposite arm where they were crossed over his chest, Tony said nothing and watched the guy warily. Obie was long dead. And he'd been a lot older last time Tony had seen him. Somehow, this copy of Obie had aged better than either of the others, and that was downright bizarre.

"He's a bit older than I remember, though," not-Obie added quietly, unaware of the way that statement paralleled Tony's thoughts. "And a lot more afraid of me than I feel I deserve."

Stung into answering, Tony snapped, "you tried to kill me. Excuse me if that makes me a bit wary."

"I what!?"

Cap gave Tony a look before turning back to not-Obie. "Something tells me there's a story there. Gonna tell it, Obie?"

Hearing Cap be so friendly with the guy Tony remembered leaning over him and very literally tearing out his heart then leaving him to die, the guy Tony remembered stealing SI out from under his feet, and threatening to kill Pepper... Well, it was jarring. His dad had always held Cap up as the most morally upright person ever, dedicated to righting wrongs no matter how small, and that had seemed to be true, based on what he'd done in the arena.

Tony watched not-Obie warily. "This better be good or I'm leaving."

Cap raised an eyebrow at him. "You'd need an army to stop CLU," he pointed out, "and you promised me you'd help me get Bucky back. Going back on your word so easily?"

Tony scowled at him, but couldn't refute the point. "I _am_ an army, if I can just get to my suit," he muttered mulishly, but didn't pursue the point.

Not-Obie watched him for a long minute, then drew breath to speak. "This all goes back to a project of your father's," he told Tony, "which you've probably figured out by now. A few days before your 21st birthday, your father and I had one of our discussions." Not-Obie paused and snorted. "I wanted to start reading you into the company policy and politics properly. Your father, oblivious bastard that he was, was being stubborn about it."

The weird thing was... Tony remembered that. His father had griped about the argument for hours that night, fuming, though he hadn't told anyone what the precise topic had been, before disappearing back into his workshop at SI. That had been right before Obie had started acting weird.

Carefully, he didn't say a word about it. 

Cap was the one to ask for more. "So what happened?" He prompted. "There has to be more to this."

"Well," Obie said, "there is." He paused for a moment, weighing his words, then turned and gestured to the sofa placed opposite what was obviously his favourite wingback armchair. "Let's sit down. Something tells me you both have had a long day."

Still unsure what to think, Tony nodded. "That's one way to put it."

Uneasily, he followed Cap over to the sofa and settled on the surprisingly comfortable cushions.

Silence reigned for a few seconds.

"That morning after your dad and I argued, Tony," not-Obie began, leaning forward to plant his elbows on his knees, "I got a page."

Cap looked confused for a moment before his expression cleared. Tony wondered about it, but set the question aside.

"That page, Tony, came from the workshop your father kept in the basement of SI, and it came at an unholy hour of the morning. So, naturally, I went over there to see what was so urgent. Your dad, he had a habit of forgetting what time it was when something exciting happened and he had to share it."

Tony rolled his eyes and tried to keep it from being too obvious. His dad had done that all the damn time, and not just when something exciting happened. He'd even forgotten to show up to Tony's graduation. Not that Tony'd been bitter about that. Nope.

Not-Obie gave him a fondly amused look. "Yeah, I know," he said, then went on, looking like he wanted to get up and pace. "When I got there, I made the mistake of sitting at Howard's workable to work out what was going on, since Howard was nowhere to be seen."

"That was a mistake?" Cap sounded skeptical.

"It landed me in here," not-Obie replied, tone desert dry. "Which wasn't so bad at first. I landed in a replica of the workshop I'd started out in, and Howard was on me immediately, insisting that I had to see this and the other thing. It was fun. A new world to explore and a way to prove to our own world outside that his 'new frontier' existed."

The room was silent again for a beat as not-Obie wrestled with obvious emotion. Tony was starting to think that this story might actually be true. There were plenty of details that matched up with his own appearance here, and those days surrounding his birthday. Well, what he remembered anyway. Much of it was distant and hazy, clouded by the alcohol he'd drunk then and the intervening two decades.

"We worked on putting together a program that could keep an eye on things in here while we weren't. Make sure that everything was running smoothly and as we wanted it to. Only problem was," Obie continued, "Howard ran off without telling me how to get back out, claiming he had to go make some adjustments. He left me in here, with the new prototype we'd designed, and the Master Control Program in charge of everything."

Tony stared. "That better be a joke."

Cap glared at him. "No one's laughing. That MCP was a mean bastard."

"Before he left, Howard introduced me to the reincarnated Howlies," Obie put in, nodding at Cap, his eyes going distant. Probably, Tony knew, remembering said introductions. "If he hadn't, I probably wouldn't have survived two cycles. Only the captain, here, is still online. They started out as learning programs, based on Howard's memories of the team and their war stories, but they became so much more over time."

"No," Cap replied, "I'm not the only one. Bucky's alive, too. You thought I was crazy to keep searching, after all this time, but I've seen him."

"What, where?" Obie's focus suddenly sharpened.

"When he broke me out," Tony offered.

Cap winced, but soldiered on. "CLU put them both on the lightcycle grid; I intervened. Sure, part of that discovery was luck, but… Obie, Bucky was trying to kill him." Cap gestured at him and Tony scowled at the memories that raised as Cap kept talking. "CLU has Bucky and is using him horribly, Obie. I can't let that stand. Probably repurposed him cycles ago. It's... bad. Buck didn't even recognize me. And he's been hurt. One of his arms is metal."

That comment about the metal arm sounded oddly familiar somehow, and it nagged at him, a memory that wouldn't come into the open just yet. Setting it aside and turning back to the discussion, Tony scoffed. "You at least got him to say something," he told Cap. "Your buddy Barnes wouldn't even say a word to me." Turning back to the point of the narrative, he prompted, "so Dad got out, then what? Never came back?"

"Now, see," Obie prevaricated, "that's the part of the story I don't know so well."

"What the hell does that mean? As far as I knew, you never left. Let alone spent years in the memory of one of dad's crazy prototypes."

"I have a theory," Obie admitted, "but without knowing the other half of the story, I can't say for sure."

Cap turned to him, then, and Tony took a steadying breath. This story was going to be difficult to tell. But if it was another copy of CLU sitting in front of him, the asshole would already know all of it. On the other hand, if it was really Obie, he lost nothing but a little dignity in telling it and might gain allies. The odds that this really was CLU he was facing down again were minimal, based on Cap's reactions. And Obie wasn't acting sinister, this time. His reactions felt genuine in a way CLU's had not been. He didn't feel as calculating.

Deciding to take a chance, Tony took a breath. Best to jump in at the shallow end, he thought, and started talking. "Well, whatever happened, as near as we could tell, you got out. I never knew either of you had left. And, yeah, it seemed like you were acting a bit weird for a while there. I remember thinking something was up, but mom and dad both thought it was nothing."

Tony shrugged. "Six months later, they were both dead. Car accident. About a week before Christmas. Got pulled out of school just before the end of the semester was up to identify them. Then in what was definitely a distraction, looking back, you asked me -- well, someone I thought was you asked me to pull the MCP off the internet and kill it. Turned out it'd gotten into all kinds of systems it shouldn't've and the Pentagon had found it, data mining their servers. SI paid a hefty fine for that one. I kept a copy of the code and fixed it later."

A big warm hand landed on his shoulder, and Tony only realized he'd been staring blankly at his knees when he looked up and saw Cap giving him a surprisingly sympathetic look.

Straightening his spine and squaring his shoulders, he went on. "After that, not much changed. I took over SI six months later, and things went on, more or less as before. There was a gradual shift in the contracts SI took, shifting more from support equipment for the military to bombs and missiles. I didn't see it then, but, a couple of years ago, the shit hit the fan."

Tony looked over at the man he was more and more convinced was actually his Uncle Obie. "I was on a trip to a military base in Afghanistan, one of the hot spots these days, and the convoy got hit."

"What happened, kiddo?" Obie's expression was shuttered, but there was fury blazing in his eyes. Tony had to force back a flinch at the way it raised all manner of bad memories.

Trying to play it off, Tony plastered on one of his media smiles. "The Ten Rings took me and tried to force me to build them weapons."

"Who?" Cap looked like he thought he knew the answer and just wanted to hear it spoken.

Tony obliged him. "Terrorist group. I was effectively a prisoner of war." He heard a low growl of rage come from both of the men listening, and shrugged it off. "The accommodations were pretty terrible," he tried to joke, weakly.

"You got out somehow," Cap pointed out.

"I did. Got home with few new scars and a new hole blown in the desert. Built myself some armour and went back to blow a few more." Tony felt his fists clench where they rested on his knees as the memories pulled a ball of only partially resolved anger and pain up into a spot right under his sternum. It felt like it was choking him. "I salted and burned everything of the Ten Rings' I could find. Only thing was, that wasn't the problem I needed to solve."

"So?" Cap prodded him once more, allowing him to gloss over the issue of the armour. "What was?"

Tony swallowed, trying to force the ball of emotions back down. The attempt only halfway worked. "The Ten Rings' biggest source of funding and information. The Chairman of my Board, and, I thought, my ally in everything."

Obie was up out of his chair like a shot and pacing the room like a caged lion.

"I've gotta tell you," Tony added, watching him, "if that wasn't you, it was a damned good impersonation."

Cap was silent for a minute, letting Obie think and calm himself down. Tony spent the time trying not to let the memories overwhelm him.

" _Damn him_!" Obie suddenly burst out. "Damn him to the deepest pits of hell and whatever lies beyond!"

Startled, Cap jumped to his feet and physically put himself in front of Obie. "Hey," he offered, his hands going to Obie's forearms, "it's in the past, and Tony's alive."

"You, of all people, should know what cold comfort that is," Obie hissed. "I'm going to put him in the ground so deep his circuits melt under the pressure!"

"This is either the most elaborate trap I've ever seen," Tony put in, "or it's all true. You gonna tell me what the fuck is going on here, Uncle Obie?"

Heaving a sigh, Obie let himself fall back into his chair, looking years older, all of a sudden. "My best guess is that our prototype, a replacement for the MCP, managed to get out to impersonate me."

"And that prototype was CLU, wasn't it," Tony said.

It wasn't really a question, but Obie nodded. "It was. He and I have been trading metaphorical blows ever since."

Cap made a face. "Luckily you had a strategist on your side."

That implied heavily that Cap had been helping Obie from the start. So where were the rest of the Commandoes? Probably casualties of the fight against CLU, Tony knew, but it nagged at him. If Bucky was still around, what about the others? Could they be prisoners too? He resolved to ask about that later. For the time being, his priority needed to be getting home. "So how do we get out of here?" He asked instead.

Obie gave him a surprised look, but stood and walked over to the large bay windows facing the city. "See that column of light over there?"

"Yeah," Tony eyed it. It was just as pretty as the rest if the scenery, but it reminded him a little too much of a laser for comfort right now. "What about it?"

"That's the way out. It's only open for a few cycles, can only be opened from the outside, and you need special permissions to use it."

"Wait," Tony realised something. "Cycles? I thought they were days."

"Nah," Obie replied, shaking his head. "What feels and looks like a day is a CPU cycle. This thing operates at about 48 megahertz, so it's actually only been a few microseconds since you showed up."

Staring out over the city, and at the column of light that was their way home, Tony thought a little hysterically about CPU speeds and gods. Obie had clearly aged normally in here while it was powered on. And not at all while it had been off.

And then he thought about the Cap. What would happen to him if they both got out? Could he follow? Would he want to? Obie had been in here for nearly twenty years, even if the system had been powered down just after his capture in Afghanistan. It hadn't been turned on since, and the dates hadn't been synced with the network.

Missing JARVIS' steady presence like an arm, Tony wished he had access to his AI.


	6. Chapter 6

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:16:47---

The three of them ate in silence that seemed to echo, each of them wrapped up in their own thoughts.

His fork abruptly clicking down on an empty plate, Tony blinked. He hadn't realised he'd finished his food, lost in his musings about their next move. "Hey, Obie," he broke the silence, feeling like his words were almost unwelcome. "I found the command prompt, and I had dad's old password when I came in," he said, "got any suggestions?"

Obie stared at him, thinking hard. "Think you can get me admin access?"

"Sure, but it'll be really easy to spot and trace." Tony shrugged. "If I do, we'll have to be ready for company. This place is well hidden, but they'd be able to work out the address the commands originated from."

Cap caught Obie's eye and shook his head. "We need to prepare beforehand, if we're going to do that," he said. "We don't have the firepower to take on CLU in a head-on fight. Show Tony how to access what he needs. I'm going to dust off my gear."

Obie watched Rogers turn and walk out of the room, purpose radiating off him. "I haven't seen him this riled up in years," he commented, something like awe in his voice.

Tony wasn't sure quite what to think about that, so he ignored it. "So? Gonna show me the ropes, old man?"

Shaking off the mood, Obie gave him a long measuring look. "Come on. Let's go somewhere a bit more appropriate for this than my dining room."

As he walked, Obie went on. "You said you found the command line interface. What'd you do with it?"

"I didn't have a lot of time to experiment and figure out how this place works. All I could do was edit my disc, and then I was forced to fight in the games or get caught." Tony told him. "After that I didn't have a chance to even try."

"Right," Obie led him through a door and into what seemed to be a basement workshop a lot like Howard's had once been. "Come here, then, and watch."

Settling on a cushion on his knees, Obie placed his hands on the floor beside it. "This place, we call it the Grid," he said as the world seemed to fade away like it had outside the arena. "It's based on the operating system your dad had just developed at the time," Obie went on as a series of commands scrolled past on the command prompt. Obie pulled up the system information to show him.

Tony read through what was displayed, then waited. Obie didn't make a move for a long few seconds, deliberate in a way Tony had never been. When he went on, beginning to enter commands into the prompt, Tony couldn't help but stare in a mix of awe and lust.

The whole room around them _transformed_ , reshaping itself as Obie put commands into the interface. "There are ways of reshaping the environment around us," he said. "All the potential of a caterpillar in a cocoon, but CLU hates change."

Tony huffed. "Yeah, I'd noticed."

He hadn't told that part of the story, so Obie actually turned and gave him a questioning look. Tony shrugged. "After I got home from Afghanistan, I stopped SI's weapons manufacturing. Evil you didn't like that."

Obie gave him a long measuring look. "So what's SI doing now, if not weapons?"

"Mostly we contract for SHIELD, and I'm trying to get us into clean energy. It's an untapped market."

Obie nodded slowly. "And you have some idea how to do that, I assume."

"I'll show you once we're out of here. If we get out of here." Tony's fingers were physically itching with the need to get his hands on the code Obie had been demonstrating. "First show me that trick again."

"I'm holding you to that," Obie shot back.

Tony knew that tone of voice, and it sent more memories shuddering through him. He wasn't going to get out of that discussion.

On the other hand, if this really was uncle Obie, he shouldn't have to.

Refocusing his attention, Tony watched avidly this time, picking apart the commands and syntax as Obie wrote them, doing his damnedest to remember everything he could about the OS his dad had been working on way back when, and which he hadn't touched since. He hadn't been able to bring himself to work with it for years after his dad's death, and by the time he would have probably been ready to do it, he'd developed his own OS and all manner of other systems. It hadn't been worth the effort to pick apart his dad's legacy code. Tony settled in to relearn the system.

An hour later, Obie disappeared, saying something about getting some rest, but Tony barely noticed, too intent on what he was doing.

Some indeterminate length of time later, Tony gave in to the need for coffee, and stood, stumbling when his stiff muscles protested and nearly sent him sprawling on the floor. Apparently even with a cushion, coding crouched and hunched over wasn't all that great for him.

When he made his way back up to the living areas, blearily searching for the kitchen and some caffeine, Tony found himself pinned by a pair of reproachful stares.

"Tony," Obie said slowly, "did you sleep at all last night?"

"Wait," Tony tried to salvage the situation, "what time is it?"

Cap made a sound like he was caught between amusement and disapproval. "Nearly 1000. You're going to eat and then get some rest," he decided, tone firm.

Even as he was amused by the use of conventional clock time over the system time, Tony could just tell the man would put his foot down and haul him off to whatever spare bedroom this place had, if he felt it was needed. Giving in to the need for sleep wouldn't even be so bad, now, anyway. He met Obie's eyes and smirked crookedly. "Yeah, okay. Busted. But it was worth it."

That got both their attention.

"How so?" Cap demanded.

"Haven't tested it properly yet, but, hey. Sometimes you've gotta run before you can walk." The words felt appropriate, given that he was about to test fire a prototype of the armour for the first time, again, with about as much guarantee that it would work as he'd had two years and change ago. Tony dropped down into a crouch and entered the commands in the system that he'd been working on through the night.

It felt bizarre when it happened, like his skin was lifting away from his body and then peeling free before it hardened into a familiar metal shell. A very literal kind of re-skinning. He'd gotten the idea from the video game industry, and was very pleased that it worked. Instants later, his armour was in place, and the interface was booting up. Albeit a lot more slowly than usual, since it had to partition onboard memory, and install his OS and HUD, as well as all the onboard components and drivers.

Tony wanted to shout in triumph. Obie and Cap were staring, wide-eyed.

"Tony," Obie asked slowly, "what did you do to yourself?"

The question jerked him a ways back down to earth. "What I had to," he answered. 

Having the familiar voice modulator between him and Obie was soothing his nerves more than he'd expected it to. Having a way to defend himself and the ability to activate it anytime he needed it was definitely a good thing.

"That's an arc reactor," Obie said flatly. "I'd recognize one anywhere, regardless of the size. How did you get it so small, and what the hell is it doing there?"

"It's powering the suit," Tony replied in kind. "We can talk about the technical details later."

"Come on, Tony," came the response. "Don't bullshit me. I can see that armour isn't actually more than an inch or two bigger than your body in any dimension. What is it doing?"

Tony saw Cap scowl darkly. He put up the faceplate with a groan. "I'm not bullshitting. It's powering the suit."

"So why does it seem to be embedded in your sternum?" Obie pressed the issue.

It was only the concern Tony could hear underlying the anger that kept him from digging in his heels about answering. "Because it is."

Cap went utterly still. "I have a feeling I won't like the answer to this," he said quietly, "but _why_ is it there?"

It was Tony's turn to go quiet for a beat. "Keeps me alive. There's shrapnel in my blood, thanks to my trip to Afghanistan, and it keeps the pieces that are still in there from shredding my heart valves."

Obie turned without a word and slammed out of the room. Cap looked like he wanted to follow suit, and was only holding himself back because he wanted Tony to sleep.

"Sir," a new voice floated into the room something like half a minute later and shattered the tension, "I can only assume that you are alright, but where are you?"

Cap was back to staring at him, but this time his body language was distinctly wary. "Who's that?"

"My AI, JARVIS," Tony replied absently, more concerned with trying to figure out how the fuck his AI had managed to contact him. "J, how the hell did you even get in here?"

"The interface of the armour appears to have taken advantage of the only link between the TRON virtualizer system and myself while powering up. I have been attempting to determine what happened from outside, albeit with little success until now," JARVIS told him.

"J, baby," he grinned broadly, "come to daddy." Cap was giving him the strangest look, but Tony didn't care. "See if you can get a lock on the armour and get me a way out of here."

When a figure started to materialise in front of him, Tony jumped. Cap reached for what Tony assumed would have been his shield, had he been wearing it, in a move that seemed to be pure reflex. When he didn't find it, he settled into a battle-ready pose instead, balanced on the balls of his feet and ready to attack if at all provoked.

"Captain," JARVIS' voice sounded again, coming from the man gradually appearing in front of them, "there is no need for violence."

Cap growled something about surprises under his breath, but relaxed slightly. For his part, Tony was watching his AI intently. He'd never have recognized JARVIS in a crowd, this way. Apparently his AI had decided he was tall, blond, and green-eyed, and had the build of a damned beanpole.

Once he'd finished appearing, JARVIS looked him over from head to toe and laid a hand on the chestplate of the armour, his eyes closing. It felt weirdly intimate, for all that he and Tony had more or less cohabited for decades. Tony could see Cap tense again, prepared to intervene.

"Armour diagnostics scan as normal," JARVIS reported, stepping back. "However, I cannot get you out of the system directly from your current location. I do not have the required permissions, and nor do I feel confident that I could do so without causing some kind of system malfunction which might cause a cascading failure of the entire operating system. The architecture of this system is very different from my own."

Starting to feel the drain of the emotional ups and downs of the last quarter hour, Tony nodded tiredly. "And giving you those permissions would mean we're discovered, long before I can deal with the issues in here. We've gotta get Barnes back, if we can, J. He's in here, too."

Cap wanted to say something, but held himself back. Tony could see it.

"Might I suggest locating him and bringing him to the portal, then?" JARVIS' voice suggested strongly that he was stating the obvious.

Tony couldn't deny that he kind of was. "And you can pull us out from there?"

"I believe so, sir," JARVIS replied. "I will know more by the time you arrive there. The processing speed of my own systems is far faster than the onboard capabilities of this one."

"Then work it out and get back to me," Tony told him, reaching out to put an armoured hand on his AI's shoulder. "It's good to have you back, buddy."


	7. Chapter 7

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:17:02---

It hadn't taken Cap long to put his foot down. "Tony," he said, drawing out the syllables of the name, "what are you still doing here?"

"What," Tony sniped back, irritated, "you want me to leave so soon?"

Cap rolled his eyes. "Don't be obtuse. You need sleep. Get out of that suit and make yourself some silk pyjamas or something."

Sleep did sound nice, but Tony wasn't about to admit weakness. Not now. "And if I refuse?"

"Then," Cap smirked almost viciously, his tone dropping down into a dangerous purr, "I get to make you."

Tony almost swallowed his tongue, because holy fuck what even. That was hot.

It took him a long moment, but he thought better of his impulse to push that particular boundary, and Tony gave the armour the command to disappear again. It felt just as weird in reverse, with the armour seeming to push in to meld with his skin before it left him in the neoprene-like underlayer of the armour he'd been outfitted with in the arena.

Before he could drop into a crouch to code himself a damned pair of shop jeans and a t-shirt to replace the ones he'd lost, though, Cap was there, a hand on Tony's shoulder and gently but firmly pushing him towards the door. "That's more like it," he said, the dangerous edge gone from his voice as though it had never been.

Seriously questioning the decision even as he made it, Tony didn't dig in his heels and balk, letting Steve guide him through the large house and into what Tony assumed had to be a guest bedroom. Possibly, given his Uncle's demonstration of just how malleable the environment in here was, one that had been made to appear while he'd worked on his armour last night.

Stepping into the room, Tony suddenly felt oddly isolated. The space was fairly large but sterile in its minimalist lack of decoration. White walls, carpet to match, and sinfully soft navy blue sheets on the bed.

"My room's just across the hall," Cap offered. "Get some rest, then come find me if you want."

Tony nodded. He couldn't seem to find the words to express what he felt, and Cap seemed to sense that. He nodded back and left, footsteps nearly silent in the rubber-soled boots he wore.

It was a few hours before he gave up tossing and turning and returned to the kitchen. Not long afterwards, Obie walked back in, clearly just returning from whatever long walk he'd gone on. Tony looked up from the glass of whiskey he'd coded himself and sat around, sipping at, watching his uncle carefully.

Obie looked a lot calmer, but it was that deceptive kind of calm that hinted strongly that he was keeping a rein on his emotions, albeit only barely. Tony knew the signs. A hint of tightness around the eyes, and just the slightest tension in his shoulders.

Obie said nothing but sat next to him and borrowed his glass of whiskey, draining it in a single long swallow.

Tony just watched him silently for a moment. "You gonna be able to keep it together?" He asked, only half joking.

Obie huffed. "I'll show how I feel in private if I like," he chided, voice almost sharp. "Once we're out there? That's a whole other story."

"What's our play?" Tony changed the topic. "You've shown me how the Grid works, but how are we getting through enemy territory?"

"Well," Obie prevaricated, "I'm not sure what the best choice is. Steve thinks we should take a chance and dance with the devil one last time. He wants to send you to talk to Zola about sneaking us through."

"Zola?" Tony gave Obie a long look. "Dad told me so many stories about how slippery and untrustworthy that guy was. What's he doing in here anyway?"

Obie nodded. "And he was right about that, too. Zola… I'm not sure how he got in. He just appeared between one cycle and the next, and just as quickly made himself a name as the man to go to for anything black market. Especially information. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him, but we need a quiet way through town. CLU has eyes and ears out everywhere. He was already looking for me and Steve, but now that you're here too, he'll be out for blood."

"Can't we do this without Zola?" Tony persisted. He had a bad feeling about this.

"It'd be... difficult," Obie said on a sigh. "The thing about having a disc is that it pings the network several times a cycle. We need a set of forged discs, and that's tough to come by. One is rare enough, but three?" Obie shook his head, toying with the glass he'd taken from Tony. "Pretty much impossible without someone on the inside to help."

Tony narrowed his eyes. "Give me a night, and I'm sure I can hack ours not to phone home."

"Tony, while I know you could do it, we simply don't have _time_. That portal will close the cycle after next, and it will take time for us to get there. The trip takes a minimum of a cycle to make. More if we're pursued or have to take an indirect approach. And Steve still wants to get Bucky back." Obie set the glass down on the table with a click.

Running a frustrated hand through his hair, Tony growled a string of curses under his breath. "How the hell are we doing that, anyway? Cap seems to think he can lure his buddy to the portal and it'll be all sunshine and roses, but the guy was trying to kill us."

"If we can get Barnes there and away from CLU, you and I might be able to do something about CLU's clumsy re-programming. Based on Steve's description, Bucky is still in there, buried somewhere underneath whatever CLU did to him." Obie looked grave. "But that's a gamble, too. I have no idea what CLU did, and no idea how to reverse it. And neither do you."

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:17:18---

Looking around the back room of the fancy club, with its oddly bare walls and minimalist decor, Tony bit back the urge to pace.

He felt like a sitting duck. Exposed.

And being forced to wait for his contact wasn't helping with that. A gesture had one of the ubiquitous servers silently hurrying over with a drink in his hand. It was placed on the table in front of him with a flourish, and Tony went back to doing his best to seem calm and bored.

This was an arena he was well familiar with, for all that the trappings were totally different from those he was used to. He'd made as many business deals in places like this as Obie ever had on his favored golf courses. But business deals were never quite as serious as the one he was about to attempt to make. This deal was about life and death, and not just about his. Or about a group of people he'd never met and never would. It was about his uncle and his personal hero.

Somewhat to his own surprise, he'd found himself starting to care about both of the ghosts from his past that he'd been forced to face. Despite the circumstances and all their baggage.

He and the others had arrived early, leaving themselves time to scope out the place Zola had chosen for this meeting, so that they could map out things like exits and make sure they hadn't been followed. Cap and Obie had decided that Tony was the best person to send to meet Zola, since they hadn't shown CLU that Tony was actively working with them, yet. Sure, it was the logical next move, but it assumed that Tony would be able to work through everything in time to accept the help. And CLU would know that.

Obie and Cap were staying outside, out of sight. Obie to keep their chances of getting spotted to a minimum, since he was well known on the Grid, and Steve because he wanted to use the chance to try to find Bucky. He had a better shot at that while they were on the Grid than from their home base.

Luckily for Tony's sanity, he didn't have to stew in his own thoughts much longer.

A short balding man slid into the seat across from him, and ordered a drink of his own without a word.

The silence held for a long minute as they studied one another, then Zola smirked. "I must say, Mr. Stark," he said, tone seeming to drip snake oil, "that I had not expected to meet you like this. You've caused quite the sensation, showing up here."

Tony could only hope that the guy meant the Grid in general and not the club, because they didn't need word getting back to CLU that they were on the grid. At all if possible, but having it happen this soon could easily mean disaster. "I get that a lot," he agreed. "I heard you might be able to help me."

Zola smirked smugly. "I deal in information, Mr. Stark," he replied, "and I am very good at what I do."

"I need to get to that portal," Tony told him, "and I'm sure you knew that already, or you wouldn't have agreed to meet me. So what mode of untraceable transportation can you offer me?"

"Ah," Zola gave him a once-over from head to toe, and Tony was damned glad the arc reactor wasn't visible through the standard body armour he'd been given at the beginning of this crazy adventure, and had gone back to wearing once he'd taken the armour back off, "I can offer you many things. But, more important, really, is the question of what you can offer me."

Expected though the demand was, Tony hadn't thought he'd hear it stated so baldly. "What do you want?"

Zola gave him a long measuring look before he answered. "I want you to tell me how you stopped your disc from syncing."

"And if I do," Tony leaned back in his chair and tried to project assured confidence, "you'll get me what I need?"

"It will take me some time to make suitable arrangements, if you are serious about not being tracked," Zola said archly. Implying that he would do so, but not outright promising anything.

The lack of a yes or no answer raised a few red flags. This was starting to feel more and more like a bad plan. "Without some kind of guarantee," Tony tried to press the issue, "I'm not telling you anything."

"Very well," Zola said, standing. "Enjoy your drink, and I will find what can be found."

"When I have my transportation, you'll have your information," Tony reiterated, noting that that was also not any kind of guarantee.

The worst thing about this situation was that Zola had him over a metaphorical barrel, now, and both of them knew it.

Tony couldn't just storm out. They needed that transportation, and if there was any chance to get it, he'd have to see this little farce through.

There were even odds at the moment, though, that Zola would do what Tony had asked. If someone else came along with a more convincing 'offer', Tony knew he'd lose. His biggest bargaining chip, a way off the Grid, was only good for one play. Once that knowledge got out, even to one person, he was as good as dead. And, worse, so were Obie and Cap.

Zola gave him a perfunctory nod of acknowledgment and left.

Not knowing when or where Zola would supposedly turn up with the promised transportation, he was forced to stay put.

Ten long minutes passed, as he sipped at his drink, and then the club outside went totally silent.

Instinct sent him to the floor, and not a moment too soon.


	8. Chapter 8

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:17:22---

A disc went flying through the space he'd occupied, to embed itself in the wall, and Barnes appeared in the doorway.

Fucking hell.

He needed Barnes to step away from the door so he could get out. But Barnes wasn't budging and still had a second disc that he could throw.

The tableau held, the two of them staring each other down in silence, until a crash sounded out in the large dining area of the club beyond Barnes. That spurred Barnes into motion, and Tony scrambled to avoid him. He snatched Barnes' spare disc out of the wall, and tucked himself into a roll that had him on his feet outside the small back room.

The sight that met his eyes was not a good one. Cap was plowing bodily through what looked like an entire squad of CLU's enforcers, his uniform like a red-white-and-blue beacon among the black suits and orange highlights and his shield making a lovely vibranium target, and Obie was nowhere to be seen. Deciding their chances were best together, Tony hurried across the big open area towards Cap, dodging tables and overturned chairs.

Before he could get to his ally, that same instinct, born of the time he'd spent as Iron Man, that had sent him to the floor the first time saved him again. He wasn't sure what, but something told him to hit the deck.

A split second later, Barnes' other disc whizzed through the air where his head had been, to bounce off the floor to ceiling windows on the far side of the room and rebound.

It landed in Barnes' hand, as neatly as though it had been magnetised, and the room went still. The enforcers were all on the floor, either out cold or groaning, and a part of Tony lamented having missed seeing it happen. On the other hand, Cap and Barnes were staring each other down, and damned if that wasn't a hell of a show.

"Come on, Bucky," Cap said, not breaking eye contact and his voice quiet. "I know you know me."

All he got was stony silence.

Tony knew breaking the tension of the moment might get him killed, but he couldn't stay put. He was too far from Cap and too far from the exits. Staying where he was meant Barnes would be able to get to him before Cap could do anything to help.

But on the other hand, moving would only attract the same deadly kind of attention.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

As silently and slowly as he could manage, Tony got his feet under him and crouched to spring forward. As he leapt, though, the world seemed to go into slow motion. Barnes threw his remaining disc, Tony realised he wouldn't be able to block the hit, and Cap threw himself into motion. It was like watching a train wreck. Tony couldn't look away as the thrown disc hit Cap's arm near the shoulder. The arm, severed, fell to the ground and shattered into motes of blue white light. The disc flew back to Barnes, Cap crashed bodily into Tony, and the shield fell to the floor ringing like a bell.

They landed in a heap, tangled together, and Tony had to do his best not to freak the fuck out, because holy fuck, this was bad and, pinned under Cap, he couldn't defend himself easily. Fucking idiot! He'd had the shield on his arm, why hadn't he used the damned thing? Taking a shuddering breath, he tried to check Cap over, without letting Barnes out of his sight. At least Cap wasn't bleeding everywhere.

Weirdly, despite having every chance to kill them both, Barnes wasn't moving. Tony kept a careful wary eye on Barnes as he determined that Cap was still breathing. With how still the man was, Tony hadn't been sure. Deciding that Cap was down but stable for the moment, Tony watched Barnes. The man was standing there, staring down at Cap, his mouth moving silently. Forming words, but not speaking them.

Neither of them moved until Obie burst into the room, taking in the scene and immediately dropping to one knee to shut everything down that was still live.

Barnes leapt into action. He ran at Obie, tucking himself into a neat flip that took him over Obie's bowed head, snatched Obie's disc off his back like it was nothing, and hit the floor running. Having gotten what he wanted, Barnes turned to the floor-to-ceiling windows and bolted, smashing one somehow with his disc, for all that the same disc had bounced off them like a rubber ball earlier, and taking a header out into the night air. 

Tony hurried over to the windows hoping to see where Barnes went, how he intended to survive that fall, and found nothing but cold air. 

He turned back to see Obie crouched over Cap, with a nick near his temple that Tony had no idea how he'd gotten bleeding freely down the side of his face. That, more than anything else that had happened so far, finally convinced him fully that his gut instinct had been right and this was the real Obie. No one else he'd encountered on the Grid bled like he did, but this Obie did. The others… the programs just shattered when injured, delicate and fragile, though Cap and Barnes seemed to be made of sterner stuff.

"He alright?" Tony asked his uncle, knowing his voice would reveal a lot more about his emotional state than he really wanted, but not caring too much at this point.

"He'll live, but we need to get out of here, five minutes ago." Obie stood with a groan, wiping at the trickle of blood.

"Zola turned on us," Tony said, as they slotted the shield into its harness on Cap's back before hauling him up onto their shoulders and towards the elevator they could use to get back to street level. "The weasel stalled me just long enough for Barnes to show up, then split."

"Yeah, yeah, spare me the 'I told you so's," Obie shot back, "and get this elevator moving while I try to get Steve back on his feet."

Tony nodded. "Which level?"

"Ground floor." Taking a quick glance at the floor access listings after he'd answered, Obie drew breath, then paused and reconsidered. Tony could see the calculation in his uncle's eyes. "No, wait. Change of plans. Take us to floor SB2."

As he crouched to access the command line, Tony asked, "what's down there?"

"A way out," Obie told him.

With a shrug, Tony accessed the elevator controls, sending them down almost fast enough to feel like freefall. Obie yelped satisfyingly loudly, and Tony snickered at him. His ears popped painfully after the first fifty floors, and Tony kept a careful eye on their position. Fifteen floors above their destination, he hit the brakes, hard but smoothly. The elevator came to a halt at just the right point and the doors opened with a soft ping. Tony gestured to them with a flourish.

Obie took a few seconds to gather his composure with a wordless growl, then bent down to pull Cap back up off the floor. "Come on," he commanded, "help me get him over to that platform over there."

"What for?" Tony asked, skeptical.

Obie gave him a crooked smile that was somehow all teeth as he got a small measure of revenge for Tony's little stunt with the elevator. "Ever tried to jump a freight train?"

Tony had to laugh. Compared to some of the things he'd done as Iron Man, this stunt almost didn't register. "Can't say that I have. Lead the way."

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:17:36---

Jumping aboard a moving train under your own power was one thing, Tony had discovered. Trying to do it while supporting someone else was another thing entirely. Cap was still down for the count, and heavy, to boot.

Tony was pretty sure he had a few new bruises.

He'd landed awkwardly, but managed not to twist an ankle or a knee. It had been tempting to use the armour to fly them aboard the train, but that would have attracted all kinds of attention at a time when they were doing their best to attract none.

Thankfully for Tony's fraying nerves, their attempt to get aboard unseen had gone off without a hitch. Once they were there, Obie had hurried over and pushed at Tony until he let go of Cap and sat down.

He'd done so gratefully, worn down by the lack of sleep and the emotional rollercoaster of the last few days.

Obie settled Cap half on Tony's lap, facedown, and took the shield off Cap's back to get at his disc. It left Cap in something of a compromising position.

Not sure what to think of that, Tony froze and watched warily. To his mingled relief and disappointment, all Obie did was take the disc then roll Cap onto his back again. Cap's right hand flopped down next to Tony's leg, the slight contact seeming to burn through Tony, and the left made a kind of awkward stuttering contact with the floor of the train car the were in, the stump of it seeming to almost spark where it touched anything solid.

Obie held Cap's disc in one hand and did that thing Tony'd seen CLU do what felt like months ago now. The disc lit up and a holographic projection appeared above it, in the same blue white light that the disc itself glowed. The projection itself didn't really make a lot of sense to Tony on first glance. It looked like some amalgam of code and DNA, which, okay, was fitting since Cap was basically a learning AI based off a person, a lot like JARVIS.

When he took the time to think about it, though... The difference between Cap and JARVIS was in the level of personality they'd started out with. Where he'd given JARVIS a more or less blank slate, Cap had been mature and confident in who he was as a person when Howard and Obie had known him, and that had clearly translated over to whatever learning algorithm his dad had used to recreate him. His continued contact with Obie had only strengthened his sense of identity, too. Cap seemed like enough of a person in his own right, and acted more human than any AI Tony had ever encountered. Except maybe JARVIS. But Cap only had the memories that he and Howard had lived together to base his personality on, as it were, and even those had been filtered through Howard's memory, opinions, and perspective.

Barnes was probably in a similar state. Or had been, anyways. Now there was no doubt that he was far less stable than Cap thanks to CLU's influence.

As Obie scrolled through the helical code structure, Tony continued puzzling over the question. Was Cap individual enough to come out with them? Obie seemed to think so, and he knew a lot more about Cap than Tony did. But, on the other hand, Tony's in depth knowledge on how AIs worked counted in his favor here.

No matter how he thought about it, he kept coming back to a 50/50 split with respect to Cap's chances.

It was surprisingly distressing to think he might have to leave Cap behind in here.

Tony had gotten attached and if Cap didn't survive the trip off the grid, Tony knew he'd _feel_ it.

"Ah!" Obie's satisfied exclamation startled Tony back out of his glum thoughts. "There we are."

A section of the code glowed vaguely malevolent orange, and Obie reached in to pluck it out. The corresponding section of code on the other strand of the helix immediately duplicated itself and filled the gap left behind. 

Obie watched it in satisfaction, then heaved Cap up onto his side and slotted the disc back into place. "Built-in backup," he commented. "They're quite handy. Most of the programs on the Grid are single stranded, created by CLU and designed to be disposable. As far as I know only CLU and the Howlies ever had two. He'll reset, now, and be back with us shortly."

"You done this before?" Tony watched in amazement as the arm Cap had lost defending him grew back. Once it had fully regrown and settled, Cap jerked just slightly, all his muscles tensing for the briefest instant before releasing again.

"Not often. But it's still bad for my stress levels," Obie grumbled, giving Cap the stink eye. "He usually manages not to get himself this badly hurt in the fights he picks."

Tony was starting to get the impression Obie had all but adopted Cap, the way he talked about the guy. He snorted. "You know, you're more protective of him than you ever were of me."

There was more truth in the statement than he'd intended, and Tony looked down, not sure whether he felt more ashamed or afraid of the answer he might get.

Obie was silent for a long time. "Tony," he eventually said slowly, clearly weighing his words, "when I agreed to be your godfather, I thought long and hard about the whole thing. Knowing that I'd be the one to take you in if anything ever happened... that wasn't an easy decision. I was single at the time, and almost as deeply involved in the company as your father, for that matter. That changed over the years, as you grew up, but only in scope. I never did find the right partner, but you, Tony... You were something special. I never once regretted agreeing to your father's request."

Tony forced himself not to speak, knowing Obie hadn't finished.

"After getting stuck in here, I told myself I wouldn't make the same mistake again. That I wouldn't go through life without telling and showing the people I cared about, that I did. I loved you like my own, you know," Obie said, his expression darkening again, "but I didn't ever think I'd get stuck in a place like this and not have the chance to tell you that. And I will never forgive that two bit whoreson of a broken arithmetic processor for ruining the trust you had in me."

The outrageousness of the insult made Tony burst out laughing, despite the seriousness with which it was delivered.

Obie stood, and stayed where he was for a moment, one hand resting lightly on Tony's shoulder. "Keep an eye on him," he pointed at Cap with his chin, "I'm going to go try to clear my mind. I won't be far."


	9. Chapter 9

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:17:39---

When Cap opened his eyes, they immediately locked onto Tony's.

Tony wasn't sure what to think when Cap didn't move, still half in his lap, and instead reached up to touch his face with his newly regenerated left hand. Tony was startled by the warmth in the touch.

"You're alright," Cap murmured on a quiet breath of relief.

"You idiot," Tony was oh so very tempted to swear at him for a half hour, "my life is not worth yours."

In a sudden moment of clarity, he thought back to the times Pepper had yelled at him about Iron Man. Was this what Pepper felt when he came home hurt?

That thought led into the next, primed as he was by the conversation he'd had with Obie and his own thoughts about the events he'd lived through on the Grid.

Fuck. He was getting way too attached too quickly, and would end up falling head over heels for Cap if he wasn't careful. That would be a disaster if he got out and Cap couldn't, on a very personal level. Not to mention the way it was making him question what he felt for Pepper.

When Cap spoke, shattering the silence that had built, Tony startled, nearly dumping the man on the floor. "I did what I thought was right," he said, "I knew I could take the hit. You couldn't. Not without your armour. Maybe not even with it."

Tony wanted to jump up and pace, but Cap's weight was pinning him down. Restless, he squirmed. "Damn it, Cap--"

"Steve." He broke in, interrupting Tony. "Call me Steve."

Swallowing back the torrent of words that wanted to spill out, Tony nodded. "Steve."

Before he managed to get up enough steam to deliver his rant properly, though, Obie came strolling back down from wherever he'd been. "Oh, good," he quipped, voice dry as a desert wind, "you're awake."

"I'm fine, Obie," Steve sat up. "Anyway, we have other problems."

Tony missed the warmth and weight of him immediately, but did his best to stifle the feeling. He scowled to hide his reaction to Steve's sudden movement. "Yeah, CLU has Obie's disc, and you can bet he's gonna send Barnes after us again the second he reads what's on it." Standing, Tony had to keep himself from punching a wall at the reminder, even if he'd said it himself. He managed, but the burst of emotion still left him leaning his forehead and one forearm against the wall of the train car. "Fuck, I knew I should have wiped it when I had the chance!"

Obie nodded. "Thought I told you to stop it with the 'told you so's," he replied mildly. "So now he knows what I know. That won't help him get out unless he has Howard's access codes."

"He might," Tony replied. "Read my disc before Steve managed to get me out."

"Unless he copied it, that shouldn't be too big a problem," Obie disagreed. "Anything that's read off a disc has to immediately be transferred to a new one, or it goes into the system RAM and gets overwritten if it's not constantly accessed."

"You're betting on him not noticing what he had in his grasp?" Tony was incredulous.

"Even if he did -- and knowing you there was a lot of information there for him to have to sort through -- we're way ahead of him. Getting out here isn't easy."

Steve huffed. "So what now? I assume we're outside the city."

"For now, we wait," Obie told him. "We're on a freight train, heading out into the Empty Sectors. It should pass right through the area we need to get to."

Steve's eyes narrowed. "Wait. Why is a freighter making a run into the Empty Sectors?"

Tony stared at him, horrified by the conclusion he was coming to. Steve's instant suspicion told Tony everything he needed to know. "It shouldn't be. Where was it diverted from?"

Obie's expression darkened, realisation washing over him. "I don't know, but I'm sure as hell going to find out." He fell into a crouch, his fingertips splayed against the floor of the freight car.

A second later, he was on his feet and growling. "Get the hell down into the hold, get below, we're about to have company!"

Responding automatically to the the note of urgency in Obie's voice, Tony obeyed. Steve stubbornly tried to stay where he was for a moment, before he gave in and followed. Seconds after they were out of sight, some kind of massive structure came into view. Where the city had been dark grey shading into black and highlighted with clean blue white, this thing was highlighted in orange, and dwarfed the freight train they were on. 

"A Data Transfer Module," Obie said quietly. "That has no business being out here."

"Well," Steve put in, "now we know where this train was going. But why?"

"If CLU's behind it, it's bound to be something sinister." Obie ran his hands over his head and pinched at the bridge of his nose. "Something tells me he's after a way through the portal."

Steve's expression went hard and determined. "We can't let him get it."

"The best way to do that," Tony pointed out, "is to get out of here. Once we do, J and I can deal with him easily from my workshop."

"That still means we need a way out to the portal." Obie looked a bit unsure of himself, for the first time Tony could ever remember. "If this train stops in there, we'll be sitting ducks."

"We have no idea what's in there," Steve protested, "and we don't need to know. We could just steal a light flyer or something and continue on."

"Oh, because that's not going to have everyone in there on our tails," Tony shot back. "There're bound to be a lot of people aboard something that massive, and if CLU's in charge he won't give a damn about losses. He'll just send them after us."

"There's also a damn good chance Barnes will be sent after us again," Obie added quietly, "if he hasn't already. Steve, if you get knocked out a second time, it'll be the end of you. I don't think we'll be able to reset you again, if..." Obie let the sentence trail off, obviously not wanting to voice the thought, lest it become prophetic.

"Don't worry about me," Steve said, sobering. "I don't intend to let that happen."

"I know you," Obie replied, "I know just how all that tactical genius of yours disappears the moment Barnes shows up. I want you to promise me you'll get me to that portal."

That was clever. Tony had to admire the move. It meant Steve had to live long enough to do what Obie asked, and he had to do it without massive traumatic injury.

"Fine," Steve scowled. "But after that I'm going after Bucky."

They stared each other down for a few long seconds, then Obie nodded. "I guess that's the best I'm going to get out of you."

Tony watched them warily, wondering if the tension would explode into action, but both of them backed down, inch by inch.

Once they had, Tony took the opportunity to call up his armour again, warily watching the Data Transfer Module come into view as the freight train approached it. He wanted to contact JARVIS, ASAP, if he could.

The armour rose up off his skin like it had the first time, and the sensation was no less strange or startling now than it had been the first time. Once he felt like his skin had settled back into place, Tony reached out through the interface, which had booted much faster now, and found his AI already reaching back. "Sir," the AI said to him, locking him out of the interface and powering up the weapons, "you have five seconds to explain to me why you and the good captain are not acting to contain Mr. Stane. At the end of that time I will take action."

Damn it.

He'd forgotten in the chaos; JARVIS hadn't met Obie yet in this incarnation. "J, no!"

Hastily, Tony used the override that locked all the armour joints, taking advantage of the way he could apparently use touch to gain access to programming tools, here on the Grid. "J, hold your fire!"

"I see no reason to," the AI replied, tone icy and hurt.

"JARVIS, buddy, it's a long story," Tony said on a sigh. "Let's put this on hold until I'm back in the workshop. And no killing, maiming, or otherwise injuring him. Obie's coming back out with me."

JARVIS submitted, but it was a near run thing. He remembered, with a kind of crystal clarity that Tony didn't have, exactly what had happened that night after the charity gala. What had happened when Tony had tried to clean house at SI. What Stane had done, both to him and to Tony, in his bid for power.

But he also didn't have all the information.

Tony waited until he was sure his AI had powered down the weapons. "I'll tell you everything once we're out. For now, what you need to know is that apparently the Obie who tried to kill me was a cloned copy of CLU. This one is the real Obie."

"Well," his AI snarked at him, "that certainly isn't far fetched."

"Really," Tony sniped back. "This is harder for you to believe than the fact that I've somehow been digitized and am currently inside a clunky old computer laser system from the early 90s?"

"Tony?" Steve interrupted, tapping on the faceplate, "everything alright in there?"

Tony gave the interface a dark look. "No going Skynet on me. Now, I'm gonna hack you admin credentials for this system. If you see an opening to get us out, take it."

"Until you are safely out, sir," JARVIS replied, "anything I use those passcodes for is a risk. This system architecture remains unfamiliar to me, and any errors I make have the potential to corrupt the memory or cause the portal to fail before you can get there."

"J," Tony admonished, "if you see an opening, you take it." Composing his features, he popped open the faceplate and nodded. "We're good. I was having a discussion with JARVIS."

Obie looked up. "Jarvis? Is he still working for the family?"

Tony winced. "In a manner of speaking. The original Jarvis died not long after dad did. This is an AI I developed a few years later, based on MCP's code." He caught the looks the others gave him on hearing that and shook his head. "Don't look at me like that, J's not malicious." Tony turned to Obie, and added. "Your evil clone gained my AI's eternal loathing, though, with what he pulled."

Obie snorted. "I'm not surprised. We'll have to deal with that later, though."

Steve nodded. "First we have to secure ourselves a way out of here."


	10. Chapter 10

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:17:41---

It felt like only seconds after they'd caught sight of the massive Data Transfer Module, they were passing inside it. Tony had to suppress a visceral shudder. Something about this was making him feel very uneasy, and it wasn't just the size of the place. It felt off, somehow.

Like something was here that shouldn't be, or something vital was missing. He wasn't sure. Maybe both. But either way it was making him want to be far the hell away from this place.

When he turned to the others, Obie was crouched down, doing something on the command line interface. Steve was doing something similar, but with the wall of the train car. Whatever he was doing, it apparently got him what he wanted.

"Tony," Steve called in an undertone, though there was no one in sight but them. "We need to get down three decks to reach the access to the flight deck."

"Great," Tony replied, trying not to roll his eyes. "How do we do that?"

He was still in his armour, and therefore effectively a big red and gold target. Steve was, if anything, going to stand out even more, with his uniform and shield.

Steve gave him a look that said he knew what Tony was thinking, then scanned the room as he replied. "There's a stairwell two hundred meters to your 7 o'clock. Once we get down three levels and out, we'll need to cross a wide open space on some catwalks, and then climb back up a level."

Obie nodded. "Sounds easy enough. There's no one around."

Tony missed the flicker of movement, but JARVIS didn't. "Sir."

"I see it," Tony replied quietly. In an undertone he added, "Steve, we've got company."

Steve scanned the room one more time and bit back a curse. "It's Bucky."

How he knew that, Tony had no idea. He was about to ask, when Steve took charge. "Tony, get Obie to the flight deck, I'll deal with Bucky and meet you there," he commanded, his voice barely loud enough to carry to them. The moment he was done speaking, he was in motion, silently hurrying to the edge of the train car and using it for cover.

"Steve," Tony hissed, grabbing for Steve's arm and missing, "Steve, no!"

Obie caught him around the waist before he could go after the moron. "Tony," he whispered, "he's not wrong. Come on."

When Tony glanced back over at the position Steve had been in, he saw no one. It was too late, and now he had no choice but to trust that Obie was right and Steve knew what he was doing. Obie had been the one to make Steve swear to stay alive, after all.

Reluctantly, hearing the first clash of disc and shield as he moved, Tony followed Obie to the stairwell Steve had pointed out.

They made it without mishap, and, when the door closed behind them with a hollow clang and quiet wheeze of hydraulics, Tony did his best to force his focus back away from Steve. Leaving him there to fight felt far too much like abandoning him.

Obie clearly knew what he was thinking. "It's sound strategy, kiddo," he said quietly, starting down the stairs. "Steve knows how to fight, and this way he won't be worrying about Bucky trying to get to either of us. And I have you with me. He doesn't know how good you are with that suit. I don't either, for that matter. But I'm not a fighter, Tony. I never have been. And Steve knows that. No matter how good or bad you are, I'm better off having you with me."

That was a valid point, for all that Tony didn't like to acknowledge it. Or the reason why he didn't like it. Firing the thrusters in his jetboots, Tony let himself drift down to the next landing, without bothering to say a word in answer. 

He landed next to Obie, his suit making a dull clang against the concrete of the stairs. Obie was staring at him. "Alright, now it makes more sense that you're using that arc reactor to power your suit. You didn't say it could fly. And what the hell are those thrusters, exactly?"

Tony reached up to put a hand on Obie's shoulder. "What the hell point would there be in making myself armour that I'd have to walk around in? I'd never be able to get it anywhere. Even a horse would be a huge improvement. And loading it up on a plane each time would just be silly. As for the thrusters, that's a discussion for after we're back in the workshop."

"Right."

They reached the correct landing and Obie pushed the door open cautiously, listening for any foot steps, and looking around for anyone posted to keep watch.

Spotting no one, he stepped out and Tony followed. The door opened onto a tiny landing which was only just large enough to accommodate the arc swept by the door, then immediately became catwalk. The catwalks, narrow gratings that they were, didn't look like they'd hold the weight of the armour. The room they were in, or, rather, suspended above, was cavernous and seemed like it could probably hold two football stadiums with room to spare.

It was also filled to brimming with people. Programs, Tony corrected himself. Those were programs. All of them looked like they had those maliciously orange highlights on their clothing, just like CLU's enforcers, and Bucky himself.

Obie's eyes followed his, and he swore. "Fucking hell, he's been building an invasion force!"

Tony nodded, as much as he could in the armour. "This is bad. What do we do? We can't just leave and hope he doesn't get them to the portal. Or worse, through it."

Obie stared down at the scene, thinking hard. "I don't know. But you're right, we can't do nothing."

Tony watched the rows and rows of programs. "They're probably drones," he said. "CLU won't leave anything to chance that he doesn't have to."

Obie nodded, then added, "you're probably right, but shut up for a bit. He's here and it looks like he's going to give a speech."

Tony wanted to protest, but Obie was right; they needed intel.

Watching from their perch, high above the masses of drone programs and CLU himself, Tony wanted to roll his eyes at the pageantry and propaganda. Not only was the speech CLU gave surprisingly pedestrian and predictable, droning on about going Outside and fate and what mounted to Manifest Destiny, but the image he presented looked uncomfortably like the footage of Hitler's speeches.

All it lacked was the infamous salute, interspersed between parts of the speech.

Obie was still watching intently, either unaware of the historical parallels or not caring for the moment, and his attention paid off. Tony, busy working his way past seeing someone who looked like Uncle Obie setting himself up as a dictator, almost missed the relevant part of the speech.

"-- the time has come," CLU was saying, his arms raised triumphantly, "for us to advance our cause, for the world to see how powerful we are. For HYDRA's new order to rise up out of the chaotic national feuds and unite all the world under our rule!"

The crowd cheered, saluting CLU with what looked like spears or staves, and Tony just... 

It didn't compute for a long moment, because what. The. Everloving. Fuck.

"Okay," Tony muttered to himself, "that explains a lot."

It also made that elusive memory he'd been trying to chase down -- damn, was it really only last night? -- come into sharp focus. He'd heard rumors before about a guy with a metal arm, thanks to the close eye he kept on SHIELD, and anything that might end up on his plate as Iron Man. This guy with the metal arm? He'd come up once or twice, billed at the best assassin and sniper the world had ever known. Only a few rumors floated around about his existence. He was a ghost that had popped up a few times throughout history. Tony himself had been fairly sure it was all fabricated. An urban legend created to explain a few assassinations whose execution no one could seem to solve. After all, no single assassin could possibly operate for over fifty years, and it just made no sense to have multiple assassins throughout history that all had metal arms. If nothing else that made for one hell of an identifying mark.

But the rumours he'd heard and SHIELD's information had claimed that the assassin worked for HYDRA. Tony'd dismissed that as impossible; Cap and the Howlies had wiped the Red Skull off the map during the Second World War, and followed up by destroying HYDRA.

This, though. This was (sort of) living proof that HYDRA was not only alive and well, but had tried to kill him. And the rumours about the assassin with the metal arm also seemed to be true. And, even more unbelievably, there was the possibility that had to be acknowledged that assassin could be one Sergeant James Barnes, even out in the real world. Or, rather, that he could have been. If it had truly been Barnes who'd been turned into HYDRA's literal steel fist out in the real world, odds were very good that he was long dead and they wouldn't have to worry about him. Or if he wasn't dead, that he was so ancient that dealing with having a metal arm grafted onto him made him basically unable to move.

Tony shook his head in an attempt to clear it. He could deal with that issue later, once he was back out of the Grid.

Obie was staring down at CLU, stunned, and that turned out to be a good thing. Despite all Tony's instincts screaming at him to get them moving, that they had been in one place for too long, that stunned hesitation was what gave them the most vital piece of intel yet.

"Ah, it's good to see such enthusiasm," CLU went on, "because we have in our possession the Key. Before this cycle ends, we will be off the Grid, fighting for the glory of HYDRA."

Obie swore under his breath. "He's got it here," he said in an urgent undertone. "My disc is somewhere aboard."

It was their best chance to sabotage what CLU was trying to do.

They had to get that disc.

"Obie," Tony hissed, aware of the extreme degree of irony inherent in the fact that he was holding someone else back, and caught his uncle by the shoulder and held him down when he started to his feet. "Obie, we need that disc, but you running in there without any idea what's waiting for you isn't gonna end well."

"Yeah?" Obie almost snarled, "watch me."

"Damn it, Obie," Tony hissed at him, thinking about the tactical situation and what they needed, "listen to me for a second." He waited until Obie met his eyes properly, before he continued. "Look, that disc is gonna be secured behind as many safeguards as CLU can plan in," Tony started. "You know that as well as I do. It probably means he'll have it on the bridge of the command deck. So here's the plan. You come with me as far as the way up to the command deck and tell me what traps he's going to set, then you go to the flight deck as planned and secure us a way out. I'll go after the disc. I've got my armour, so I'm better protected than you."

"I just got you back," Obie replied, "after being stuck in here on my own for the better part of twenty years. I'm not letting you walk into that lion's den alone."

Tony muttered a curse under his breath, feeling the seconds tick by like a physical itch between his shoulder blades. "Obie," he said carefully, "if you think going to the flight deck alone is any safer, in a place like this, you're crazier than I ever thought you were when I was dealing with CLU."

That, of all things, finally brought Obie up short. His jaw worked for a second as he searched for words, then gave in and pulled Tony into a hug, armour and all. "You lay low and get your ass to the flight deck as soon as you can," he demanded, "because if you're not there in fifteen minutes, I'm coming after you."

Tony nodded. "Fifteen minutes," he agreed, knowing it was asking a lot for him to get the disc that fast, retrieve Steve, and deal with Bucky, but they had to move fast and get the fuck out of here. The longer they were here, the higher the chances that they'd get discovered, and killed.


	11. Chapter 11

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:17:47---

Tony scowled at Steve in the close confines of the elevator to the command levels. How Steve managed to make such a large elevator feel tiny was beyond him, but Tony didn't like it. Steve was shooting back his best glare.

For a while, icy silence reigned between them.

"I thought I told you to go to the flight deck," Steve eventually growled, frustration and concern in his voice.

"You did," Tony acknowledged, "but you missed CLU's big speech while you were playing hide and seek with Barnes."

"What was so important that you decided to leave Obie on his own?"

Tony could hear the threat in the words. He watched the floor counter, aware that they were nearly out of time. "Obie's disc is here," he said, deciding blunt was the best approach. "If we leave it here, CLU will have access to the portal out, the way he was talking about it."

Steve took an audible deep breath and looked like he wanted to pinch his nose. "That's the last thing we need," he conceded, settling himself into a ready stance on the balls of his feet, "and you're giving me details, once we've got that disc back."

Under a second later, the elevator doors opened with a soft ping and Steve was moving before they'd fully opened. As he exited the elevator, exploding into motion, the doors at the far side of the room slammed shut in response.

By the time Tony was out in the center of the room, Steve had knocked out three of the four men inside, and was turning to the last. Tony turned his attention to the door. It was clearly reinforced, and would be all but impossible to simply blast through quickly. Tony smirked behind the protection of his faceplate. He had other tools in his arsenal.

Settling into a crouch, Tony rested his armored fingertips against the floor.

Huh. Nothing?

Giving the command to lose the gauntlets for a moment, he watched as they seemed to peel open and retract into the forearm plates. Trying again with his bare hands and trusting Steve to watch his back, Tony pressed his hands to the floor again.

This time the system responded, seeming to do so all the faster for having denied him the first time. It didn't take him long to find the correct override, and then the door was sliding open. He quickly dealt with the alarms as well, sending the all-clear signal, in the hopes that it would buy them some time. Steve was through the door before Tony could even stand up, and dealing with CLU's aide, who was inside the room.

"Long live the-- glk!" The aide tried.

"I'm letting you live," Steve growled at the man, holding him a couple of inches off the floor by his throat as Tony stepped into the room, "because answering to CLU will be worse than anything I can do to you."

Wow. That was... More vindictive than Tony would have expected from Steve.

Letting the man fall those couple of inches, and fold to the floor, coughing, Steve turned to face the door, keeping the guy in his sight. "Get that disc, Iron Man," he commanded.

Not sure how he felt about hearing his still fairly new moniker on Steve's lips, Tony nodded. "Captain."

As he hurriedly hacked himself permissions to take the disc, Tony mulled over what he'd just seen. This whole scene fell somewhere between disturbingly hot and unsettling. He'd never heard any stories about Steve that had painted him as being so willing to use threats and such artistic revenge. Whether that was because his dad and Obie had never seen Steve act this way, never felt the need to tell Tony about it, or this AI clone had simply developed the tendency on his own, Tony would probably never know.

Not that it mattered much in the long run, but it had Tony very much off balance, right now.

Permissions in his metaphorical hands, Tony stood and pulled the disc out of the device that held it. "Come on, captain," he suggested, "time to go."

There was no verbal response, and Tony turned to look over his shoulder.

Steve stood stock still, facing off against Barnes, who'd appeared in the doorway.

"Bucky," he said, voice as unthreatening as he could make it while keeping it firm and level, "I don't want to fight you."

He got stony silence in reply, and Barnes stalked forward. Tony saw Steve's grip on his shield tighten, though he made no other move.

The aide they'd forgotten to keep pinned down made a break for freedom the moment the door was free, gaining the anteroom of the command office, and the tension dissolved into violence. An alarm began ringing that had Tony's teeth standing on end, and Barnes seemed to fly at Steve.

Unsure what to do, Tony hesitated. On the one hand, Steve had it handled, but on the other, this was wasting time. Steve and Barnes were equally matched, so this could drag out for a long time. Letting them duke it out was not the best choice, given that they were out of time anyway, now that they'd been discovered and the whole place was alerted to their presence. Glancing around the office, looking for a way out that didn't involve getting Steve hurt again or having to get past Barnes, Tony paused. Remembering what Barnes had done at the club, he stared at the windows on the far side of the office. The windows, he wanted to laugh, that overlooked the flight deck, far below.

He watched as the two of them seemed to bounce off the walls of the office, Steve knocking over furniture and Barnes blowing holes in anything that stood between them, waiting for an opportune moment.

He got one seconds later when Barnes managed to get in a lucky hit, sending Steve sprawling within arm's reach of him. Blasting out a window, Tony hooked one arm around Steve's chest under his arms, hauled him to his feet, and then leapt out the window.

Steve yelped, trying to protest, but they were in freefall. Settling for wrapping himself around Tony, Steve started complaining. "I had him! Why did you do that? And how the hell are we going to avoid--"

Tony fired his thrusters, and Steve shut up.

"Come on," he told Steve, pulling up into a hover as he scanned the flight deck for Obie, "we have to get to Obie and out of here. Forget Barnes for now. He'll follow."

His HUD highlighted Obie for him obligingly a moment later, and Tony wrapped his arms more securely around Steve as he let himself fall forward out of the hover and into a gentle banked arc that set them down next to the plane Obie had picked out for them.

"About damned time you two got here," Obie complained. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Ran into someone on my dance card," Tony shot back, "let's go!"

Obie slid gratefully into the copilot's seat and pointed Tony at the main controls. "You take the wheel. Steve, take the rear guns."

Tony smirked. "You'll want to buckle in, then," he snarked, "'cause I'm damn sure we're gonna have company for this trip."

Rolling his eyes, Steve slid his shield onto his back and settled himself in his seat. "Just get us out of here."

Taking his own seat with a mocking bow, Tony took a look at the controls, momentarily baffled by them, then wrapped his hands around the stick. What could go wrong, right?

It took him a moment to work out what made the jet go, but when he found it, he grinned broadly. There were several squads of men converging on the jet, now, but Tony left them all in the dust, gunning the engines and sending them blasting out of the massive hangar bay. Obie made a strangled sound, probably in response to the sudden acceleration, and Steve grumbled something about hotshot pilots and Howard Stark.

Tony ignored them both, flinging the jet upward and away from the Data Transfer Module. It felt good to be in open skies again, and he found himself enjoying the flight despite the circumstances. He hadn't had the chance to take his new armour for a proper spin, and test out the thrusters output and response time. This thing felt like a lumbering beast in comparison, for all that it was still sleek and fast.

"We've got company," Steve called, confirming that they would have to fight their way free. "Five bogeys, six o'clock high."

With a dark chuckle, Tony replied, hearing Steve fire the guns and feeling the jet shudder under the recoil, "let's take them for a ride, then."

Throwing the jet into a roll, Tony dove, making Obie's hands clench tightly on his seat's armrests, white knuckled. Steve let out an exhilarated whoop, firing at their pursuit as they plunged toward the dark waters below.

Tony didn't look back, focusing on dodging and rolling to avoid the return fire as much as possible. Taking a tight turn and pulling up hard to dump some of their momentum, Tony circled back around, putting them face to face with their startled pursuit. Three of the fliers scattered, but one -- presumably Barnes -- didn't. Swerving to avoid hitting the guy at the last possible second, Tony wondered why Barnes hadn't fired at them. The others had, once they'd recovered from the shock.

With the three fliers who'd scattered now back on his tail, Tony decided it was time to test their pursuers' capabilities, and the jet's. Making a series of evasive maneuvers, Tony abruptly pulled up, forcing two of the trio of fliers on their tail to overshoot, and then immediately fell in behind them. They broke off their attack, but the maneuver left the third guy vulnerable and Steve shot him out of the sky.

Turning his attention to the two fliers circling back around to press their attacks, Tony grinned broadly. There was a twinned spire of rock jutting out of the dark waters below him and to starboard. Slowing the jet as much as he dared, and pulling into a tight banked turn that threw them against their armrests as the jet went almost fully onto its side relative to the horizon, he brought the gap between the spires neatly into his sights. "You ready for this, Cap?" He called. "I'm taking us right between those rocks."

"Bring it on!" Steve replied, sounding utterly high on adrenaline.

Obie just looked pale, and gave the impression of a man begging success from any God who'd hear his prayers.

With his own elated whoop, Tony flung the jet downwards into a steep dive, the nose of the craft at nearly a 45 degree angle to the horizon, and sent them arrowing toward the narrow gap.

All three of the remaining fliers gave chase, firing as they dove after the jet. Tony felt the impacts of several shots, this time, since he couldn't dodge and roll. His choice of trajectory didn't leave him a lot of room to maneuver.

It was very effective, though. Steve picked his moment wisely. Instants before the jet flew neatly between the two spires, flipped a full 90 degrees to the horizon this time, he fired a long burst of shots at their pursuers, forcing them to either dodge and hit the rocks or be shot down.

One of the three, who'd hung back rather than pursuing closely, escaped. The other two didn't.

Deciding the time was right, Tony brought the jet back to its intended orientation, wings parallel to the horizon, and made a break for the beam of light that marked their destination. It was much closer, now, and brighter. Lying off to the port side of the jet, it seemed to burst out of the dark waters like a lone light in the darkness.

The single remaining flier followed them.

"Tony," Steve called after about a minute had passed, "we've got a second bogey."

"What's it doing?" Tony demanded.

"Nothing yet," Steve told him, sounding like he didn't trust it one bit. "They're both staying out of range of the guns."

Tony didn't trust this either. 

Sure enough, as they made their final approach to the portal, the pair of fliers pursuing them suddenly closed the distance they'd kept between themselves and the jet.

"Bordel de merde," Steve suddenly swore, almost shocking Tony into getting them all killed, "it's CLU."

Tony was pretty sure his expression went anticipatory. "Let him come, I'll blast him into next year."

Obie rallied enough to speak, hearing that. "No," he disagreed. "He's mine. You two deal with Barnes."

"For now," Steve tossed over his shoulder as he fired at their remaining two opponents, "maybe we should get to the portal."

Conceding the point, Tony did what he could to evade the fire coming from Barnes and CLU. He mostly succeeded, too, but one lucky shot knocked out Steve's guns. Left without any way to return fire, Tony could tell Steve was about to abandon the gun turret. That, naturally, was the moment Barnes chose to blindside them. Approaching out of Tony's blind spot, and unseen by the others, Barnes got off three good shots. One pierced the canopy of the gunner's seat, the second flew through the hole left by the first to hit Steve's shoulder, and the last knocked out the jet's starboard engine. It almost felt as though he was trying to make a point rather than shoot them down.

Torn for a long second over what to do, Tony could only watch as Barnes soared over them, his light flyer upside down. The moment seemed to last half an hour, broken only by Steve's murmur of Barnes' name, and then it was gone. Cursing up a blue streak, Tony struggled to keep them in the air. "Alright," he called, "hold onto your pants. I'm taking us down before we get shot down."


	12. Chapter 12

\---system time: April 3, 2008 14:12:25:34:33:17:54---

The jet came down on the platform hard, sending all of them jerking against their harnesses. Tony made a face, knowing he'd have at least one new bruise, and knowing that it might slow him down in the fight that was sure to come the moment they were out in the open.

Steve was already on his feet and hitting the hatch to open it. Obie was still in his seat, looking dazed. He looked up when Tony's armoured hand came down to rest on his shoulder. "You alright, Obie?"

The question pulled a flicker of humor to the surface. "I haven't been alright for twenty years, kiddo. This is the closest I've been since I got stuck in here."

Tony pulled him up out of his seat. "Come on. We can't get pinned down in here."

"You know," Obie commented dryly, "you're going to tell me the whole story of what I missed once we get out of here."

"We'll see. First we have to get out." Tony shot back and led the way off the jet.

The scene they found was more or less what Tony had expected. Steve was facing off with Barnes, staring his friend down stoically, and CLU stood at Barnes' back an expression of mingled glee and vicious enjoyment on his face. It reminded Tony too strongly for comfort of the way CLU had looked the night he'd stolen the arc reactor right out of Tony's chest.

By the time he'd shaken off the memories, the moment had broken. Steve and Barnes met in a flurry of blows almost too fast for Tony to follow. It left him no opening to jump in and help Steve, so Tony put himself between Obie and the others on the platform, physically using the armour to shield his uncle. To all appearances, neither Steve nor Barnes was holding back that much, if at all.

And yet, somehow, Tony could tell there wasn't much force behind the blows they were exchanging. It felt more like Barnes was testing Steve's defenses, really. Steve, himself, seemed to be spending a lot of time warily watching Barnes as though trying to read his mind. Tony could understand why. Barnes was acting differently. There was a hint of emotion behind his eyes and in his body language. It wasn't much, but it was a startling difference to the seemingly emotionless asset they'd seen in the arena.

Rather than draw attention to that, though, willing to take any advantage Barnes would spot them, Tony refocused on CLU. 

The bastard was watching the show and smirking, clearly savouring having turned the pair of longtime friends against one another. Tony had cheated him of seeing this in the arena. He'd never admit it, either, but Tony found himself watching them, too, marveling at the fighting skills the pair of them were showing off.

Barnes was implacable, gave no ground he didn't have to, and more agile than his body language implied. He stood like he thought he was a brick wall, and reflected attacks much like one, taking the hits and dispersing the force. In stark contrast, Steve was all over the place, circling, feinting, testing, and generally doing a good impression of a rubber ball with a shield.

It felt like half an eternity, but CLU broke the building silence a few seconds later.

"Stop playing and kill him, asset," he commanded, in a tone of voice that said he expected instant obedience.

Tony saw the moment of inner conflict. Steve apparently missed it, more focused on CLU for the critical split second it took Barnes to make his decision.

Steve definitely didn't miss the subtle smirk on Barnes' face, though, and he stared. "Buck?"

Without a word, Barnes composed his expression and turned on his heel. Steve reached out with the manner of a man who's seen a mirage that had turned out to be real, wonder on his face and stunned surprise all but radiating off him.

CLU looked apoplectic. "Asset, if you do not comply immediately, you will be wiped and repurposed."

Barnes had CLU within arms reach now, and chose that moment to make his move. He grabbed CLU by the throat and lifted him off his feet. "I ain't letting you. Steve," he called over his shoulder, "get the hell out of here!"

As he finished the sentence he tossed CLU off the platform.

The next half second seemed to happen in slow motion. CLU's hand flew up and grabbed at Barnes' belt. Barnes, not expecting the move, was yanked off balance, and fell backwards. 

Steve leapt forward, making his own grab for Barnes, but it was too late. CLU's weight pulled Barnes off the platform. There were no hand holds, and though Tony didn't doubt Steve could have hauled Barnes back up, it wasn't to be.

Their fingers seemed to brush, and then Barnes was tumbling down toward the dark waters below, and Steve spent a stunned second staring down after him. "No," he yelled, "not without you!"

Getting his feet under him, Steve leapt after them.

It was all over in a metaphorical blink, and then Obie and Tony were alone on the platform with a destroyed jet for company.

About to go after the pair of morons, Tony was steeling himself to possibly have to dive into the water, and was brought up short when JARVIS appeared in front of him and snatched him up, pulling him out of the Grid.


	13. Epilogue

\---June 3, 2010--- 

Tony felt oddly numb.

It was as if he'd never left. Well. It would have been if not for the fact that Obie was down on one knee next to him, a hand on his shoulder and calling his name, worried.

Everything came back in a rush, reality suddenly no longer distant, and he took a shuddering breath.

"Damned noble moron," was all he could say, well aware that years had passed on the Grid in the time it had taken him to get his bearings enough to realise that what he felt was grief more paralyzing than any since his parents had died. Or CLU had tried to kill him while wearing Obie's face.

"He always was," Obie sniffed, and Tony was caught between surprise at the sight of the tears his uncle was unashamed to show, and some lingering confusion over the dissonance caused by the contrast of this Obie and the one he remembered far better than the uncle who'd always had his back and meant it.

\------

As night fell, the few stars that New York ever got to see coming out to shine weakly against the backdrop of the sky, Tony found himself staring out the panoramic windows of his penthouse blankly. He'd tried to clear his mind enough to sleep and failed.

The penthouse felt weirdly big and empty despite Obie's presence, and Tony found his fist unconsciously coming up to rest on the glass at head height. Tears stinging at his eyes, he rested his forehead against the cool surface.

"Damned noble moron."

\------

It took a few days for SHIELD to notice that Obie was back, and Tony was glad of that. It had meant that they'd had some time to process what had happened.

The first thing Tony had done had been to have JARVIS start combing through the empty sectors of the disc of that virtualizer hoping to find and kill CLU's process tree once and for all, and pull Steve and Bucky out, if possible. The second thing had been to hack into SHIELD to find out how much they knew about this little invention of his father's. He hadn't been at all surprised to find out that they knew almost everything he did.

The third thing he'd done was have a long fight with Pepper.

She'd come down to the workshop the morning after his return to the real world to find Obie trying to peel Tony's hands off his interfaces long enough to get him to sleep, and promptly flown at him in a rage. It had taken an hour and a lot of shouting to calm her down enough not to try to claw Obie's eyes out a second time. It had resulted in a rather uneasy truce.

Thankfully, the three of them had managed to work through most of their open issues before SHIELD had shown up. Well, at least enough to coexist in the same space. After hearing the full story of what had happened, Pepper had immediately declared that she didn't believe it. Only JARVIS' corroboration had given her pause. On the other hand, it had also sent her running, saying that she needed some time. Which meant that Pepper was currently avoiding the workshop and penthouse like the plague, but when she did have to come in she managed to interact with Obie civilly.

After that, Romanov's appearance had just been more of the same, albeit with less drama. She'd shown up at the workshop door two days later, with Coulson at her side, and, in that calm level voice of hers that made Tony's fingers twitch, demanded to know what had happened and how Stane had returned from the dead. She'd gone on to demand to know why Stane was not only in the penthouse but allowed to roam all of Stark Tower freely, including the workshop.

It took her a while to convince him to explain what had happened. Besides his distrust of SHIELD as a whole, there was also the neck stabbing incident fresh in his memory. Though, granted, it paled a little next to the emotion that his stint on the Grid had stirred up in him. Tony liked Coulson better, though the man's eerie calm matched Romanov's. So he also made Tony uncomfortable. At least Coulson appreciated humor, even if he didn't know how to smile.

Neither of them got the full story.

To Tony's surprise, though, it didn't take them long to come to a decision on how to proceed, after talking to Obie. It had taken the two of them one look at Obie and an exchanged glance, and a nod. They'd suggested that, since no one but them knew about Obie's doppelgänger, they should announce that despite having been presumed dead, Obie had been found on some uninhabited island and rescued. And then immediately smuggled him somewhere tropical to get a tan.

Tony wasn't sure how to feel about that.

\------

It took them all several months, even after they'd officially announced Obie's miraculous safe return by press conference a week later, to really get used to one another and in that time Tony could feel Pepper putting more space between them again.

It left him very conflicted. On the one hand, he was still pretty sure he loved her, and always would. He still wanted a relationship with her. But if she didn't want one, then it was off the table. He might be well known as a playboy billionaire, but he made a point of making sure no one ever felt coerced into his bed. On the other hand, the whole thing had made him even more aware of the feelings he'd been developing for Steve, and the fact that those were also not going anywhere, now that Steve was, well, dead a second time.

In the end he just decided to shelve the issue. Dealing with it was complicated and would take a lot of time, and, right now, he had a green energy company to build, from the ground up.

\------

It had taken him a year, but he'd finally almost managed to get the optimized large diameter arc reactor design stable, under all but the most extreme environmental stresses.

\------

The large diameter reactor had just been installed and the initial test had gone off without a hitch. So having Coulson show up halfway through his celebratory glass of champagne with Obie and Pepper had been bad enough. The file he'd been handed before Pepper led Agent Agent back into the elevator... That had been even worse.

Obie had stayed in the room, and Coulson hadn't said a word about it, despite the breach in operational security that represented. All the clues said this was definitely something Big.

Opening the file was like a punch to the gut.

"Holy shit," Obie said, running his hands over his head. "Is this for real?"

Tony shrugged, staring wide-eyed at the footage of Steve fighting off a whole squad of men with guns with nothing but his shield. "I guess we'll find out soon. The Agent there doesn't usually make shit up, and I never did stop those yearly searches Dad insisted on in his Will. Doesn't explain why SHIELD has him and I was never told, but we can tackle that later."

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILER: Steve and Bucky die, on the Grid. They're okay (well, for values of okay that mean alive) in the real world of the MCU.


End file.
